Most politicians and pundits characterize the US-Chinese relationship as some sort of rivalry, with both sides seeking to dominate the other. You’ll hear references to the Thucydides trap, the notion that when there is one great power falling and another rising, there is often war between them. Some argue the US is falling and China rising, hence the trap; meanwhile, China-watchers point out China may have peaked, which is even more dangerous. There is undoubtedly a rivalry between China and the United States, but too many are keen to fall back on the Cold War as the paradigm to explain it.
For some time at the start of this century, America and its allies sought to integrate China into the global economy, based on the notion that such economic integration would inevitably lead to political liberalization. Most of the proponents of that policy now admit it was a dismal failure. China accepted the invitation, ignored the rules, and won convincingly. Why was the policy wrong, and how did China pull this off at a moment of US dominance? You can’t understand the Sino-American relationship without first understanding of few historical facts about China.
Start with the obvious: among nations, China has a unique combination of strong culture, vast territory, huge population, and plentiful resources. If you surveyed the world circa 1000 CE (Christian Era), the Song Dynasty was by far the greatest power, and you might have assumed the coming millennium belonged to them. They had a functioning central government, great schools, advanced technology (gunpowder, printing press, magnetic compass, printed money) and had surrounded themselves with client states that could not threaten them. This established the first lesson in Chinese history: when China is united, it is strong and respected.
The coming millennium was not theirs, however. They went through periods of internal disunity and external hubris which weakened them greatly. In the first decade of the 1400s, the Ming dynasty sent huge so-called treasure fleets to visit Africa, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean and throughout Southeast Asia. When Columbus was desperately seeking to build and man a three-ship voyage to America, Chinese admiral Zheng He took 250 ships out in the treasure fleet. His ships were six-times longer, nine-times wider, and carried ten-times the load! Filled with precious gifts and thousands of emissaries (doctors, teachers, envoys, etc.), the fleet was designed to show the world that China needed nothing, but would deign to give the rest of the planet a taste of China’s superiority! Unsurprisingly, when money got tight, China simply stopped showing any interest at all in the rest of the world (lesson #2)
By the end of the millennium, the last Chinese dynasty was a large, sick empire picked over by small, distant, and powerful European states. To the Chinese, this was the Century of Humiliation, with foreign nations occupying important ports and setting up trading outposts, dictating to the Chinese the terms of peace and trade. This developed the third lesson for China: the world envies China, and will always try to minimize and weaken it.
Finally, the end of the Century of Humiliation only happened with the arrival of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is the sole authority of China (final lesson). Mao Zedong may have initiated the CCP’s authority with his statement that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” but the CCP has only increased its credibility since then. While the CCP inflicted severe pain on the populace (the Cultural Revolution, the Tienanmen Square massacre), it also moved the largest number of desperately poor peasantry out of poverty in human history, and made China into a scientific and industrial powerhouse. That goes a long way in the minds of the Chinese people.
What does China want? China believes there is always a great country which is the center of power in the world. It seeks to be that power. It recognizes the United States is currently that power, but China believes America is gradually fading from the scene, and China wants to replace it, not necessarily fight it. China’s ascent ignored previous attempts by countries like Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia to become preeminent. Instead, China chose the American model: become powerful by competing using the resources (personal and national) available to it, not militarily dominating your rivals. Mind you, under a Communist government, that includes subversion (TikTok), intellectual property theft, currency manipulation, massive espionage, and economic strong-arming.
There is one other Chinese desire: to re-take the rebel island of Taiwan. China has reclaimed all the other territorial possessions lost during the Century of Humiliation (Manchuria, Macau, Hong Kong, etc.), but the anti-communist forces remain free on Taiwan. It is hard to explain the depth of this desire to Westerners, but here’s an analogy. Imagine the last Confederate hold-outs retreated to Texas, and refused to surrender. Washington decided it was best to leave them to their own devices, and so a rival “America” existed in Texas, constantly claiming to be the real America. The discovery of oil would only have exacerbated the relationship, much like Taiwan’s earlier economic growth and subsequent mastery of advanced microchips worsens the China-Taiwan feud. For the CCP especially, Taiwan is one last domino that must fall, or remain a reminder of an alternative the Party simply cannot stomach.
Unlike the Soviet communists, China does not have a model to export to the rest of the world. Rather, they prefer a world remade to accommodate China’s preeminence. There is a native Mandarin phrase which best describes this, and it is one which has entered into the English language, too: kau-tau, or more familiarly, kowtow. It means “head-banging” literally, but figuratively applies to the deep bow (forehead to the floor), which in ancient China represented an extreme form of submission before a superior. In such a world, China would not care what happened in New York, or London, or Paris, as long as it did not interfere with China’s wishes. China would control the world’s currencies, its means of production, its world governing bodies, its scientific and medical advances. It would all be for the best, as Beijing decides. After all, China has always been the “middle Kingdom.”
China would argue that its ascent as a great power has been within the rules of international law, as it were. They were invited into the World Trade Organization, and their massive exports, initially of low-value consumer goods, were welcomed as a cheap alternative to domestic production throughout the developed world. But they learned how to produce things, and there is a unique value in developing a chain-of-production (think cars, for example) where they master each step, innovating along the way, and eventually producing high quality products at competitive prices. Add into that the ability to ignore pricing or profit (it’s a command economy, after all), and China can simply rout entire industries in foreign markets. They did this to the US in the 2000-2010 period (the “China shock”), but now President Trump’s tariffs have turned China’s sights on Europe, with the same result.
In addition to unfair trade practices, China engages in rampant intellectual property theft. China invited the world’s best leading companies to build facilities in China, if they wanted to sell in China. Those companies (like Tesla, Volkswagen, Apple) trained Chinese managers and workers. Then those same people left the firms and started new companies with heavy government investment, eventually besting those who trained them, based on their insider knowledge. There is no such thing as a non-compete agreement in China. This is also evident in the race for Artificial Intelligence (AI). China has several AI start-ups that produce new models just slightly less capable (but much less expensive) than the leading American ones. How do the Chinese stay just behind but never get ahead? They engage in “distillation,” a practice where they secretly use the public-facing side of US models to train new Chinese ones. It’s almost as effective, but much cheaper.
Chinese President Xi can see the finish line of China’s quest to be the preeminent power. But he knows that China is rapidly aging (demographically), and its population is shrinking, so the youth dividend period of economic development is over. China has vast resources, but it did not become rich before it grew old. And he must purge his military leadership regularly due to rampant corruption, while they have not fought a war since 1979. Because he has total control over the Party and the State, he also knows China has enormous economic dysfunctions (ghost cities, no social safety net, huge government debts and a necessity to export due to poor domestic consumption) that must eventually be addressed.
Unlike those who worry about China surpassing the US, I’m more concerned with how the US manages the beginning of Chinese decline. This is the most dangerous period, when China’s leaders realize they might not ever achieve their goals. Decline has already started, and only a system-wide reset (i.e., the end of the CCP) can arrest it. Sino-American military rivalry boils down to one spot on the globe (Taiwan), and recent events in Ukraine and Iran suggest China is nowhere near prepared to fight its way onto the island. Some form of Chinese intimidation or blockade could work, so the issue is not settled. But all the rest of the issues between Beijing and Washington can be negotiated.
The initial western policy of normalizing China failed, but that does not mean war is inevitable. China has developed into a major economic force, and can still be normalized. You saw some of what that looks like at the May summit between Trump and Xi. There was no significant development: just two leaders talking. Why? Xi feels he has backed off Trump’s worst tariff threats, and made it known he is willing to use his dominance of the Rare Earth minerals as his own “Trump” card. This leaves him free to focus on Taiwan and the other domestic issues he needs to tend to.
American policy must deter the Chinese from invading or blockading Taiwan, while securing allies and resources in the global economy for the long-haul competition. America and Europe must resist succumbing to the siren song of inexpensive Chinese production, even when it is better, for it is the result of unfair competition, and will only lead to inevitable dependence. China is not a reliable partner, nor is it the new “Evil Empire.” It is a long-term economic and diplomatic rival, and the West has the means necessary to best it. If we find the will.