State capitalism, as adopted by the People’s Republic of China, represents a growing threat to the United States’ primacy in the international system. The Beijing Consensus, as it has been termed, represents a direct assault on the values and goals of the liberal economic order and by association the Washington Consensus. These competing economic models will become a defining element of the twenty-first century and will overshadow the continuing threat of terrorism as the most pressing foreign policy challenge. The Beijing Consensus will develop over the next couple decades into an ideological binary that may cause conflict and protectionism between pro-neoliberal governments led by the United States, and pro-state capitalist nations led by China. However, this paper argues that the Beijing Consensus is bound to fail because of an array of misplaced incentives and vulnerability to changing populist pressures in China, thereby countering the acceptance of state capitalism worldwide.