For better or for worse, it seems China's international strategy is centered around respect for state sovereignty. That strategy excludes the support and arming of non-state actors and would-be revolutionary movements, but does allow them to legitimately draw a clear distinction between their foreign policy and the American Empire's and has made many countries, even ideologically opposed ones, more willing to negotiate and deal with China because of it. Recent examples being Peru's big new Chinese port and Argentina's Milei crawling back to Xi, both countries the US considers its "backyard". The deals China has been offering are literally too good to pass up for many countries when the alternative is imperialist subjugation and butchery. China gets to present itself as a reliable economic partner who won't try to undermine you politically, but you have to acquire state power first to deal with them.

I know everyone considers the UN a meme at this point but most nations in there who aren't the rabid attack dogs of American imperialism actually desire diplomacy to be conducted according to original UN principals since they are chafing under US hegemony. But those nations also don't want to be used to wage dozens of proxy wars between bipolar great powers again, "letting go of compassion" means these nations and the billions of humans they represent are going to get wrecked for decades. That isn't an appealing or hopeful future. Those people do not deserve that fate and you cannot fault both China and the non-imperial world for trying to avoid that.

So as the US, EU, and Russia have been make fools of themselves in the UNSC and destablizing the world for years, China is increasingly seen by the global south as a natural leader to represent their interests. Hell just on December 1 China took the the unprecedented step of eliminating all tariffs for goods imported from all of the countries that the United Nations categorizes as least developed and with which China has diplomatic relations, which is about 12% of humanity. I think that many of those people are going to appreciate China for that, same with their massive strides in combating climate change while the west is still trying to desperatly snort lines of cheap oil and extract imperial superprofits to buffer their faltering economies.

Yet "international prestige" alone isn't going defeat imperialism, and you are right China has been really weak when it comes to militarily challenging the US so far. But I think we will see more things like what happened in the Soloman Islands, where in response to western imperial pressure China is literally invited to military intervene if necessary- letting the PRC have their cake and eat it too so to say. They can challenge American hegemony while not being considered hegemonic themselves. In this way, they could very possibly create new allies for themselves without a violent overthrowing of the state apparatus being required to do so, just by aligning all the economic and political incentives in their direction. That means those allies are going to be more stable and have more local support for that relationship. Then it will be the west who has to keep putting in the effort of trying to violently topple those nations, thus further isolating themselves diplomatically with their naked barbarism. And maybe these new "non-ideologically aligned" allies will find themselves trying to emulate China domestically to intentionally draw themselves closer to China's orbit to further shield themselves from imperialist counter-attacks, which are guaranteed to happen while capitalists breathe. But as those imperial superprofits start getting choked its going to get harder and harder for imperial states to draw breaths. I could very well see China's policy evolving to incentivize, but not force, such a transition for their new partners in a few decades.

It could be me just huffing hopium, but I do see a possible future where Chinese foreign policy puts the majority of humanity in position to all push the big communism button together one day and avoid WW3 in the process, and by Marx wouldn't that be beautiful?

(Though lowkey China needs a few virulent attack dogs of their own to do based revolutionary shit while China gets to keep looking mostly clean themselves, that's the killer combo right there.)