Niche construction theory, popular in evolutionary biology, can help us understand the lag between economic growth and political reform in highly interconnected states, where competition for resources drives adaptation via the selection of strategic opportunities, ranging from the predatory and parasitical to the symbiotic. A rugged or smooth fitness landscape, created by the system’s topology, determines how a society makes choices on the path toward its own fitness peak. No two societies will start from the same point or follow the same path to its local or global optimum. This makes it difficult to simply transfer strategies, norms, or institutions across cultures. Evolutionary social psychology (ESP) teaches that individuals and societies alike exhibit bounded rationality, practice heuristics, and imitate local models and cultures they know. ESP may also help explain why China’s developmental experience can be a more familiar starting point than a Western alternative, and more easily copied by other emerging nations. Nevertheless, disordered activity may keep the overall global system in balance.