July 30, 2018 Topic: Security Region: Asia Tags: China Asia Trump Indo-Pacific Asia-Pacific Xi Jinping

America and China: Destined for Conflict or Cooperation? We Asked 14 of the World's Most Renowned Experts

The National Interest asked 13 scholars and experts to respond to the following question: Given growing tensions between the United States and China, where do you see the overall relationship headed? Towards a permanent state of competition?

by Mitchell Blatt

The National Interest asked 13 scholars and experts to respond to the following question:

Given growing tensions between the United States and China, where do you see the overall relationship headed? Towards a permanent state of competition? Potential conflict? Or an eventual restoration of a more friendly and cooperative relationship?

From the diverse array of experts we assembled, we received responses from across the spectrum. Some think military conflict is inevitable. Some think there is no reason the two sides should not be able to keep peace. Some see China as a status quo power. Others see China as a revolutionary challenger.

The following is each response in alphabetical order. (The views of authors expressed are their own and not necessarily those of their institution.) Click on the links below to go to each expert's response.

Graham Allison (see below), Gordon G. Chang, David Denoon, Michael Fabey, John Glaser, James Holmes, Lin Gang, Kishore Mahbubani, Robert Ross, Ruan Zongze, Robert Sutter, Xie Tao, Xu Feibiao and Wang Jisi.

Graham Allison, Author of 9 Books, most recently Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?. He is presently the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School:

Relations between the U.S. and China are destined to get worse before they get worse.

The underlying reason is Thucydides’s Trap. When a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, alarm bells should sound: extreme danger ahead. Thucydides explained this dangerous dynamic in the case of Athens’s rise to rival Sparta in classical Greece. In the centuries since then, this storyline has been repeated over and over. The last 500 years saw sixteen cases in which a rising power threatened to displace a major ruling power. Twelve ended in war.

Unless Xi Jinping fails in his ambitions to ‘Make China Great Again,’ China will continue challenging America’s accustomed position at the top of every pecking order. If Xi succeeds, China will displace the U.S. as the predominant power in East Asia in his lifetime. Unless the U.S. redefines itself to settle for something less than ‘Number 1,’ Americans will increasingly find China’s rise discombobulating.

As Thucydides explained, the objective reality of a rising power’s impact on a ruling power is bad enough. But in the real world, these objective facts are perceived subjectively — magnifying misperceptions and multiplying miscalculations. When one competitor ‘knows’ what the other’s ‘real motive’ is, every action is interpreted in ways that confirm that bias.

Under such conditions, the competitors become hostage to third party provocations, or even accidents. An event as bizarre and otherwise inconsequential as the assassination of an archduke in Sarajevo in June 1914 forces one or the other principal protagonists to respond. In doing so, it triggers a spiral of actions and reactions that drag both to an outcome neither wanted. Candidates for that role in the current rivalry include not only Kim Jung-un but political trend lines in a democratic Taiwan, whose citizens have less and less interest in living in China’s Party-driven autocracy.

Having been engaged in intense discussions with many of the leaders of both China and the U.S. over the past 14 months since publication of my book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?, my takeaway is that if Thucydides were watching, he would say both parties are entirely on script, accelerating towards a collision that would be as catastrophic as it is unintended.

Escaping Thucydides’s Trap in this case will require a surge of strategic imagination as far beyond the current conventional wisdom in DC and Beijing as the remarkable Cold War strategy crafted by statesmen we now celebrate as the ‘wise men’ was beyond the consensus in Washington at the end of World War II.

Check out other comments in this series from: Graham Allison, Gordon G. Chang, David Denoon, Michael Fabey, John Glaser, James Holmes, Lin Gang, Kishore Mahbubani, Robert Ross, Ruan Zongze, Robert Sutter, Xie Tao, Xu Feibiao and Wang Jisi.

Gordon G. Chang, Columnist and author of The Coming Collapse of China:

The United States of America and the People’s Republic of China have irreconcilable interests. As a result, these two super states are destined for intense competition and perhaps conflict.

We call China “revisionist,” but “revolutionary” is more precise. Chinese state media outlets these days, like in the 1950s and 1960s, carry revolutionary statements. China’s media now fawn over Xi Jinping’s “unique views on the future development of mankind.”

What is so unique about the views of the regime’s supremo? In September 2017, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in Study Times, the Central Party School newspaper, wrote that Xi’s “thought on diplomacy” has “made innovations on and transcended the traditional Western theories of international relations for the past 300 years.”

Wang’s 300-year reference was almost certainly to the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, now recognized as the basis of the current international system of sovereign nations. Wang’s use of “transcended” indicates Xi is contemplating a world without states other than China, especially because Xi himself often uses language of the imperial era, when Chinese emperors maintained that they—and they alone—ruled tianxia or “all under heaven.”

This tianxia worldview, increasingly evident in Xi’s and Beijing’s pronouncements, is, of course, fundamentally inconsistent with the existence of a multitude of sovereign states. The Chinese view, breathtakingly ambitious, unfortunately drives many of Beijing’s belligerent actions.

Beijing leaders not only speak tianxia but act tianxia. They are, for instance, trying to take territory from India in the south to South Korea in the north. At the same time, they are moving to close off international water and airspace, a direct challenge to everyone not Chinese. They are supporting the North Korean nuclear weapons and ballistic missile efforts with technology, components, equipment, materials, and financial and diplomatic support. Almost every day, their media attack the concepts of representative governance and individual freedom.

China’s rulers act with impunity, injuring American pilots and diplomats and harassing American ships and aircraft. They have seized an American vessel from international water and interfered with others. They steal hundreds of billions of dollars of American intellectual property each year. They ignore their obligations to other states while expecting other states to honor theirs to China. They are engaging in nothing less than an assault on the world’s rules-based order.

For about 150 years, American policymakers have drawn their western defense perimeter off the coast of Asia. China each day seeks to undermine America’s friends and allies in East Asia and drive the U.S. away. That effort, of course, directly undermines American security.

China’s challenge to America is across the board and therefore existential.

David Denoon, Professor of Politics and Economics at NYU’s Department of Politics and editor of China, The United States, and the Future of Southeast Asia:

Background:

The current downturn in U.S.-China relations began in 2007. The George W. Bush administration was so preoccupied with Iraq, and the Middle East more generally, plus its frustrations with the Six Party Talks on North Korea, that it failed to respond adequately as China became more assertive in the 2007-08 period.

In that period the Chinese government recognized that it could exert pressure on its neighbors without producing a sharp response from Washington. The initial signs of Chinese aggressiveness were in harassment of the Japanese over territorial claims in the East China Sea and the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands.

The Obama administration began its Asia policy with a flourish, announcing the ‘Pivot to Asia’ and a ‘Rebalancing,’ implying a greater military and economic commitment to Asia than had been given by Bush. Although the ideas underlying the rebalancing were admirable, the follow-up was unimpressive.

Then a downward spiral began as the Obama administration proved indecisive. A weak response to the Arab Spring, vacillation over Libya, and the failure to respond when the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its own population all contributed to a sense of weakness in Washington. The Chinese used the moment to press ahead with a more assertive policy in the South China Sea. Also, by 2009, the seriousness of the financial crisis in the United States was being understood, and it led many Chinese to conclude that the U.S. style of economic management was undercutting American strength. Thus, the combination of a flaccid foreign policy and economic turmoil created an ideal situation for the Chinese to be assertive.

Shortly thereafter, the Chinese proceeded with the occupation and militarization of seven atolls in the South China Sea and ignored the ruling against this occupation by the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea. This also led to a split among the Southeast Asian states with Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia essentially aligning with China. Subsequently the Philippines began its current game of trying to keep its treaty with the U.S. while trying to extract more aid and trade from China. The Chinese also launched a series of new institutions and programs (The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Development Bank, the Silk Road Fund, and the Belt and Road Initiative) designed to link their economy with their neighbors.

The Future:

This is not a story which appears likely to end with all the parties living happily ever after. The key variable will be China’s economic growth rate. If China can continue to grow annually at 6 percent or more, the attractions of its market and its aid will make it harder and harder to get its neighbors to resist Beijing’s blandishments. If China’s growth rate slows, however, that will provide more opportunities for the U.S., Japan, and India.

China is not currently capable of directly challenging the U.S. militarily, so we are likely to face a situation of long-term competition, not war. If the U.S. can deal with its budget and trade deficits and avoid getting involved in unnecessary wars, U.S.-China relations will be tense but manageable. If the U.S. mishandles its economy or appears to be withdrawing from Asia, then Beijing is likely to test American commitments and conflict is much more probable.

Michael Fabey, Military reporter and author of Crashback: The Power Clash Between the US and China in the Pacific:

Barring any major course change in U.S. or Chinese foreign policy, the two countries’ military forces, especially their naval forces, are fated to continue to clash in the Western Pacific.

The two countries have two diametrically opposed core beliefs that guide their military maneuvers in the region. The U.S. believes most of the airspace and sea lanes are internationally open regions for the benefit of any nation. China, however, lays claim to all that as Chinese territory and feels the rest of the world should acknowledge that as fact.

The U.S., through various patrols, bases and partnerships, has managed to police the sea and air lanes for more than seven decades. While some Americans may complain about the cost of being the ‘world’s cop,’ the biggest beneficiaries during this time have been the U.S. consumers and businesses. To thrive, the U.S, must maintain the free flow of commerce from, to and through the Indo-Asian-Pacific.

China claims ownership of the Western Pacific territories based on the nations regional dominance from centuries past. Chinese leaders feel they lost control of the area due to ‘unequal’ and ‘unfair’ treaties imposed on them by Western powers and China wants to right those wrongs so that it can once again be the true ‘middle kingdom’ — or, to put it another way, ‘the center of everything.’

The budding bromance between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping aside, there’s every indication the two countries’ military positions in the Western Pacific are hardening.

For example, in the beginning of this year, the Pentagon released its new National Defense Strategy, in which, for the first time, the U.S. officially identified China, along with Russia, Iran and North Korea, as adversaries and threats. Since then, the U.S. Navy has continued with publicized freedom-of-navigation patrols in the region, exercised with allies and deployed new advanced weaponry in the Western Pacific that has increased tensions with Chinese military leaders. U.S. naval leaders embarrassed China by disinviting its forces from the annual Rim of Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise off the coast of Hawaii in July.

The reason for the RIMPAC blackballing was Chinese militarization of bases it built on artificially created or augmented island features in the South China Sea, reneging on a promise President Xi had made against doing so just a couple of years ago. Xi has also started sending warships on patrols all throughout the region, building more aircraft carriers and warning U.S. military and political leaders he will cede none of China’s claimed territory – even though that territory also happens to be land, water and air claimed by other Asian nations, including U.S. allies and partners. China wants the South China Sea to be its Caribbean. As the U.S. controls the Americas, China wants to control Asia. And with Xi being named president for life, there’s no reason to believe China will retreat from its position.

John Glaser, Director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute:

The future of the Sino-American relationship is deeply uncertain.

Though the United States will remain at the top of the international hierarchy for the foreseeable future, it is undoubtedly experiencing relative decline, while China is indisputably on the rise. The two titans of the 21^st century maintain an uneasy rapport, conscious of each other’s power, suspicious of each other’s intentions, and covetous of the stature that accompanies global supremacy.

In its approach to China over the past few decades, U.S. leadership has oscillated between dismissive arrogance, sincere cooperation and brazen competition.

Tragic foul-ups, like the Clinton administration’s accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and the in-air collision of a U.S. spy plane with a Chinese fighter jet early in the Bush administration, are seen in Beijing as the hubristic blunders of an intemperate bully. More deliberate taunts continue to this day, exemplified by the Obama administration’s pointless opposition to innocuous Chinese initiatives like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, overwrought anxiety toward the Belt and Road Initiative and President Trump’s imperious trade war ultimatums.

Yet, on crucial diplomatic and security efforts, from the Six Party Talks and the Paris climate accord to post-9/11 counterterrorism cooperation and the Iran nuclear deal, the United States capitalized on overlapping interests while respecting China’s position as a vital global player. Though less than perfect, the bilateral economic relationship has been immensely beneficial to both sides.

However, the U.S. approach at times appears to resemble outright containment. The cutthroat geopolitical undertones of the so-called Pivot to Asia were lost on no one. Washington’s attempts to counter Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea have, if anything, hardened China’s posture. And the Trump administration’s blunt confrontational approach seems to have provoked even greater distrust across the Pacific.

Rising powers must be managed carefully. China’s growing strength will surely translate into a more ambitious foreign policy, but how we deal with it is up to us.

So far, China shows no inclination toward aggressive territorial conquest. Nor is it clear that a Chinese-led order would differ much on the essentials than the U.S.-led order. Indeed, China’s rise is more a threat to America’s status as the indispensable nation than any tangible threat to national security.

Many great powers throughout history have let fixations about national prestige thrust them into destructive wars. If the Sino-American relationship is to remain peaceful, we must learn to forfeit such superficial pretensions and focus on narrow, concrete security and economic interests. Failure to do so may lock us into a costly cold war that neither country can win.

James Holmes, J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and author of Chinese Naval Strategy in the 21st Century: The Turn to Mahan:

Not too long ago we used to talking about ‘managing’ the rise of China, as though it's in an established great power's gift to manage what an aspiring great power does. China has risen, and is a great power in its own right.

China's leadership vows to make China into a ‘maritime power.’ It is a maritime power of note, and has been for some time. It has the power to attempt to make good on what President Xi Jinping calls its ‘Chinese Dream’ of national rejuvenation following what Xi, the Chinese Communist Party, and rank-and-file Chinese citizens regard as a long century of disgrace at the hands of foreign seaborne conquerors, dating all the way back to the Opium Wars starting in 1839. China's rise, and its evident desire to modify the liberal system of maritime trade and commerce over which the United States has presided since 1945, has set an interactive competition in motion. China wants to amend the system; the U.S. wants to preserve it.

Which brings about this question: how much flex is there in either side's policies and strategies? I see little on Beijing's side. You have to hand it to China's leadership. This is a very open closed society, and has put the world on notice time and again about its aims. The party leadership has also gone on record repeatedly promising to deliver certain goals such as a union with Taiwan. As any negotiations specialist will tell you, a public promise like that represents one of the strongest commitments any leader can make. Fail to follow through and you paint yourself as weak and ineffectual. Your constituents will hold you accountable for failing to keep your promise -- perhaps in gruesome ways.

Which makes the next question: how much tactical flex is there on China's side? Here's where we have some space. I believe China can be deterred. The Chinese are not irrational people. If the U.S. keeps deterring them one day at a time and convinces China they will keep doing so, perhaps over time both countries can come to some understanding that lets all of us coexist.

So the burden is on the United States, its allies, and its friends to mount an adequate deterrent to Chinese mischief-making. Restore America’s physical power, display the resolve to use it under certain conditions, and make believers out of Beijing in U.S. power and resolve, and the Americans might yet pull this off.

As far as America’s general attitude toward an accommodation with China goes, let's take our guidance from Theodore Roosevelt: speak softly and with humor; carry a big stick and show you know how to use it; be absolutely inflexible on things that are non-negotiable while being flexible on matters of secondary concern. Bottom line, we are in a long-term strategic competition, but relations need not degenerate into something really bad if we clear our minds, agree on our purposes, and resolve to compete with vigor.

Lin Gang, Shanghai Jiaotong University Chair of the Academic Committee of the School of International and Public Affairs and Director of the Center for Taiwan Studies:

Looking into the near future of U.S.-China relations, a permanent state of competition seems unavoidable. For Beijing, trade conflict with the United States may hurt the Chinese economy, but the damage is manageable thanks to its growing market for domestic consumption. Beijing does not want to have a trade war with America, but it will not give in easily either.

For Washington, President Trump is acutely concerned about the huge trade deficit with China and high-tech transference to that country. The administration’s resoluteness to push back against China is revealed in the U.S. National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, in which China is labeled as one of America’s major “strategic competitors.” For the first time since World War II the United States claims that “our competitive military advantage has been eroding.” Trump’s blaming of China as an “economic enemy” and his recent decision to impose tariffs on $34 billion worth of Chinese products, followed by the unusual passage of U.S. warships through the Taiwan Strait amid the heightened tensions, convey a clear message.

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s strategic importance to Washington has been reemphasized. Since the beginning of 2017, Washington has increased its security cooperation with the island, particularly in nontraditional spheres like anti-terrorism. Besides, the sale of a $1.42 billion arms package to Taiwan on June 29, 2017 is the first such sale under the Trump administration, which has surely overshadowed the Xi-Trump summit in April of that year and threatened to undermine PRC-U.S. relations.

In addition, the U.S. Congress has pushed for new resolutions to upgrade Washington-Taipei relations, enhance the security of Taiwan and bolster Taiwan’s participation in international organizations. Some proposals may lead to a port call by the U.S. Navy to Taiwan and sending uniformed Marines to the AIT in Taiwan. Another decision that would exert a serious impact on the cornerstone of U.S.-China relations is the Taiwan Travel Act (TTA), a breakthrough in Washington’s and Taipei’s unofficial relationship at the price of U.S.-China ties.

This does not mean that U.S.-China relations are doomed to be pessimistic as the two powers are comprehensively interdependent. In the words of Graham Allison, the two countries are in a state of mutual assurance of economic destruction (MAED). Strategically, without China’s cooperation, America can achieve only limited outcomes in global affairs. However, more efforts and dialogues are indispensable for crafting a working relationship between the two countries in the years to come.

Kishore Mahbubani, Professor in the Practice of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and author of Has the West Lost It?:

George Orwell once famously remarked that “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” This aptly describes America’s struggle to understand its changing relationship with China. It is absolutely certain that within the next decade, China will become the world’s number one economy and America will become number two. The logical thing for American policymakers to do is therefore to prepare for becoming number two.

However, it may be psychologically impossible for America to do so. I learned this when I chaired a forum in Davos in January 2012 entitled The Future of American Power in the 21^st Century. During the forum, Republican Senator Bob Corker explained that “the American people absolutely would not be prepared psychologically for an event where the world began to believe that it was not the greatest power on earth.”

Since Americans are psychologically incapable of preparing for such a world, they will wake up with a rude shock when the IMF announces one day that America has become the number two economy. In this process, it is inevitable that Americans will react angrily and feel cheated by China. This political shock is predictable but unavoidable.

Yet, all is not lost. Unlike America, China is not aiming for global primacy. It only wants to secure peace and prosperity for its 1.4 billion people. As a result, even after China becomes number one, it will not try to dislodge America from its claim of primacy. China is quite happy to uphold the rules-based international order that America and the West have gifted to the world. As Xi Jinping said in Davos in 2017, “We should adhere to multilateralism to uphold the authority and efficacy of multilateral institutions. We should honor promises and abide by rules.”

In view of this, it is actually possible for America and China to achieve a new modus operandi with a philosophy of “live and let live”, in which neither America nor China challenges each other’s core interests. China will not try to displace America from regions that America values, like the Middle East. However, it would expect America to be sensitive to its core interests, like Taiwan. All these adjustments will require sensitive diplomatic negotiations. The time to prepare for them is now.

Robert Ross, Professor of Political Science at Boston College and Associate at the John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University:

U.S.-China relations are worse today than at any time since 1971, when Henry Kissinger visited China. And they will get worse.

Scholars and policy makers have long observed that rising powers and power transitions contribute to international instability and that the rise of China would be destabilizing. Over the past ten years, China has significantly narrowed the gap in U.S.-China capabilities in maritime East Asia, challenging American naval dominance. It should not be surprising that there is now heightened U.S.-China competition; the power transition is taking place in a region of vital security importance for both powers. Moreover, as this trend continues and the gap continues to narrow, tensions between the U.S. and China will increase.

China’s rise has contributed to its impatience to improve its security in East Asian waters. Surrounded by U.S. alliances and military bases, it has challenged the regional security order. It has carried out a rapid build-up of its navy, island building and oil drilling in the South China Sea, coercive policies against South Korea and Philippines in retaliation for alliance cooperation with the United States, and challenges to the maritime sovereignty claims of Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Chinese policy has been effective; American allies have begun to distance themselves from U.S. initiatives that challenge Chinese interests. Not content to allow China to erode U.S. maritime dominance, the United States has responded with a range of counter measures, including the pivot to East Asia, assignment of a greater percentage of navy ships in East Asia, frequent and high-profile naval challenges to Chinese maritime claims, and the development of the Indo-Pacific strategy.

Predictably, U.S. initiatives have not curtailed rising China’s efforts to reshape the strategic order of rise nor stabilized U.S. alliances. China’s naval modernization and ship-production rate continue to close the gap in U.S.-China capabilities, contributing to further Chinese activism and heightened concern among American allies over the effectiveness of U.S. defense commitments. As U.S. naval dominance continues to erode and its alliance system experiences greater pressure, the United States will respond with stronger strategic initiatives designed to constrain Chinese activism and reassure our allies of its resolve to balance China’s rise. The power transition will continue, and, as China approaches naval parity, tensions will intensify.

Power transitions inevitably cause heightened great power conflict. The stakes are high, and, in security affairs, it is a zero-sum conflict. Nonetheless, the course and outcome of the U.S.-China power transition is not predestined. The course of the conflict, including the likelihood of war, will be determined by leaders making discreet decisions, influenced by their personalities, domestic politics, including nationalism, and international dynamics. Equally important, the outcome of the transition will be influenced by decades-long economic and political trends in China and the United States. In this respect, despite China’s recent rise, the United States possesses many enduring advantages that can favor it over the long-term.

Dr. Ruan Zongze, Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow at the China Institute of International Studies:

The United States, make no mistake, will continue to be a major power, but the world is being ushered into a new era of an emerging multipolar global order. It is characterized by the unsettling direction of the U.S. and the rise of China. What happens between China and the United States will largely reshape the global geo-economic and geo-political landscape in the 21st century.

Conventional wisdom holds that the rise of the China means the demise of the United States. And the success of China in the World Trade Organization (WTO) means the failure of the WTO. The reality, however, tells a different story.

If history serves as a reminder, the China-U.S. relationship is by no means a zero-sum game. Surprisingly, recent history has shown that the relationship is productive as well as mutually beneficial.

Beijing and Washington forged strong ties to work to deter the Soviet threat during the Cold War period, to fight against terrorism after September 11, to prevent the global economy from collapsing amid the financial meltdown on Wall Street in 2008. Similarly China’s success in the WTO actually proves the success of the WTO as a whole, since it has brought about economic growth and prosperity for the rest of the world.

Nevertheless, now is a defining moment for the China-U.S. relationship. More than anybody in memory, President Donald Trump has challenged basic assumptions of the relationship that held true for the past four decades. The growing tensions between the world's top two economics have sparked debate and uncertainty over the future orientation of U.S.-China relations, and will definitely generate negative effects on the world economy.

Unlike the former Soviet Union, China has worked very hard to integrate itself into the current international system by recognizing de-facto American supremacy. Furthermore, China’s integration into the global system makes itself a stakeholder.

China is committed to champion an open world economy and a multilateral trade regime as global growth remains unsteady despite signs of recovery. Beijing called for concerted efforts in fostering new drivers for growth, promoting a more inclusive growth and improving global economic governance.

I trust that an eventual restoration of a more friendly and cooperative relationship should be expected. Yet Sino-American relations will head towards a bumpy road before they get better.

Robert Sutter, Professor of Practice of International Affairs at George Washington University and author of U.S.-Chinese Relations: Perilous Past, Pragmatic Present:

Self-absorbed and increasingly powerful, authoritarian China works covertly and overtly against American interests and influence at home and abroad. A populist domestic upsurge in American politics demands higher priority for U.S. interests. The result is the most substantial negative change in American policy toward China in fifty years. The Trump administration and congressional officials register broad anger and growing angst on how China over the years has unfairly taken advantage of America’s open economy and accommodating posture to strengthen Chinese power for use against U.S. leadership. The stakes are more serious today because China is widely seen as a peer competitor and the trajectory of the U.S.-China power balance is viewed as favoring Beijing.

American military, intelligence and domestic security departments are implementing administration strategies focusing on China as a predatory and revisionist rival seeking dominance. They have widespread support in Congress. Longstanding American concerns with China’s growing military challenges combine with newly prominent concerns about Beijing’s efforts to infiltrate and influence U.S. opinion and politics. Chinese state-directed exploitation of the U.S.-backed international economic order to weaken America and advance China’s economic capacity now pose an ominous challenge to American leadership in the modern economy.

Trump administration trade and investment policies have been conflicted; the recent focus on punitive tariffs is costly and controversial. American media and public opinion have begun to discern the overall grim turn in U.S. government polices against China but it’s unclear how far they will go in supporting the shift from past positive U.S. engagement with China. Americans seeking to accommodate Beijing and 'meet China half-way' likely will be drowned out by growing disclosures on how China has manipulated such positive American approaches to strengthen Beijing and weaken America.

China is determined to pursue its current course. The impasse will grow. For now, neither side wants conflict or war, but both are prepared to test the other in advancing in such sensitive areas as improving U.S. ties with Taiwan and China’s widespread espionage and manipulation of American opinion. Chinese promises and reassurances count for little. A serious challenge or decline in China’s perceived power would alter American angst over the prospect of Chinese dominance, possibly allowing for more mutual accommodation.

Xie Tao, Professor at the School of English and International Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University and author of Living with the Dragon: How the American Public Views the Rise of China:

Chinese leaders often hail economic cooperation as the “ballast” and the “propeller” of the U.S.-China relationship. Now that the two countries are fighting a hundred-billion-dollar trade war, is the ship of bilateral relations doomed to sink?

Not necessarily. There has been no anti-American protest since President Trump launched the trade war on July 6. The absence of such protests could imply that ordinary Chinese are not terribly upset by Trump’s hostile actions. And there is a good reason for them not to feel so, as initial concessions offered by Beijing—to reduce import tariffs, for example—mean cheaper foreign products and services for the average Chinese consumer. That is to say, the Chinese public does not seem to be in a mood for a sharp downturn in bilateral economic relations.

More important, given the Chinese government’s tight control over nationalist protests, muted public reactions could be a powerful signal that Beijing is still willing to seek a compromise with Washington. For one thing, such a war will probably harm the Chinese economy much more than it does the American economy. After all, the United States is China’s largest export market, and there is simply no alternative that is as big and lucrative as the American market.

Besides, Washington could retaliate by sharply curtailing China’s access to U.S. high technology. The Chinese economic juggernaut has been driven primarily by exports and investment, not by innovation. The fate of ZTE—a Chinese telecommunication giant sanctioned by the U.S. Commerce Department—amply illustrates China’s overwhelming dependence on American technology. In the high-tech realm at least, America is indispensable to China, but not the other way around.

If the above analysis is correct, then the trade war will likely wind down fairly soon. But Chinese willingness to compromise should not be interpreted as a sign of weakness, that is, as evidence that it pays to get tough on China. Admittedly, getting tough on China seems to be the new consensus in Washington, due to increasing concerns over Chinese influence in Western societies (so-called sharp power) as well as the perceived failure of Beijing to embrace democracy, adopt a market economy, and defer to American leadership.

The danger of this consensus, though, is that it will undoubtedly empower those in Beijing who are opposed to deepening political and economic reform. Getting tough on China may well produce a tougher China that sees no choice but to engage in intense and comprehensive competition—geopolitical, economic, and ideological—with Washington. But is America ready for a new cold war?

Xu Feibiao, Director for the Division of Trade and Investment Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations:

No one would deny that the relationship between the U.S. and China, the biggest power on this planet and the emerging big power, is the most important and complicated one in the 21^st century.

For the last forty years, especially after the opening up and reform in China in the 1970s, the Sino-U.S. relationship has become increasingly consolidated through ups and downs. The two countries are so integrated economically and financially that any disruption in bilateral relation would lead to great losses and market vibrations in both countries and even the whole world.

Consider these facts: U.S. enterprises in China make profits of more than $200 billion every year, and China exports annually more than $500 billion in goods to the United States, the majority of which are produced, exported, and turned into profit by companies from America and other foreign countries.

The two countries have increasing entwined interests in this globalized and interconnected world, and both of them benefit greatly from the relationship. From Chinese perspective, an improved and consolidated Sino-U.S. relationship usually means a favorable external development environment for China, which is desperately needed, not to mention the technology, capital, and the huge market of the U.S., which are all important factors for China’s economy.

From the U.S. side, the benefits are also huge and obvious. It has greatly advanced America’s strategic interests, such as balancing and weakening the Soviet Union, winning the Cold War and the war on terror and countering the proliferation of WMDs. The relationship will continue to reap benefits for the U.S. in the future in such issues as climate change, countering extremism, bringing peace to the Korean peninsula and solving problems with Iran, cyber security and so on.

The huge volume of cheap and high-quality goods from China, the second largest market in the world, also benefits the U.S. greatly. One thing worth noting is that during and after the financial crisis, China has continued to buy trillions of dollars in U.S. debts and assets, and has anchored her currency to the dollar, which acts to help maintain the predominant role of the U.S. in the current international monetary system.

That trajectory of bilateral relations and deepening interlocked interests of both countries mean that Sino-U.S. relations will stay stable for the near future.

Of course, there will be more and more disruptions and frictions in the next few years because of the ‘Trump shock’ from the American side. To a large extent, the media over exaggerate the ongoing ‘trade war.’ There is a small possibility that the two countries would turn against each other as enemies, but it is also not likely that the two will become good friends. This time the adversary facing U.S. is different: a nuclear giant that is dedicating to opening up and the building up of a community of common destiny.

Wang Jisi, President of Peking University's Institute of International and Strategic Studies and editor of The Rise of China and a Changing East Asian Order:

The China-U.S. relationship is not doomed for a Cold War-style confrontation. Neither is it destined to avoid a deadly conflict. The more likely trend on the road ahead is a further deterioration of relations until both China and the United States come to the realization - maybe following a tragic crisis - that they have to negotiate a ‘deal’ of mutual tolerance.

Looking back at history, it is China, not America, that has played a decisive role in shaping the relationship. China changed the feature of its ties with America in 1949 when the People’s Republic was founded. China again reshaped the contour of the relationship after 1978 when its leadership decided to embark on reform and opening. Since then China-U.S. economic and cultural relations have prospered. Major changes in American politics, like the civil rights movement, the financial crisis in 2008, and changes of administration in Washington, have hardly affected the landscape of U.S.-China interactions.

Now, once again, it is mainly China’s power and behavior that incur a shifting of the bilateral ties. The Americans are alarmed by China’s expansion of global influence, exemplified by the Belt and Road Initiative, and its reinforcement of the role of the state in economy and society, as well as the consolidation of the Communist Party leadership with its ideology. The current trade friction is only a reflection of the deep-rooted, enlarging cleavages of political values, power structures, and national goals between the two giants.

The United States has now identified China as a major external threat while its bonds with other countries are debilitated. China seems unruffled in its march toward becoming a global game-changer defiant against Western values and practices. However, both countries are encountering daunting challenges at home that are much greater and more urgent than geostrategic contentions abroad.

Both China and America are undergoing dramatic domestic transformations, the destinations of which will determine whether, and how, they can find a way to renovate the links that have benefited the two sides over the last forty years. China is changing more rapidly than America. But China will continue to change in its own pace and track, and ultimately in the right direction. To dodge an ill fate, the two countries should engage each other in a benign competition to see which country is better able to make their people happier and more dignified, and who will earn more respect in the world.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo boards his plane at Sunan International Airport in Pyongyang, North Korea, July 7, 2018, to travel to Japan. Andrew Harnik/Pool via REUTERS

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