Beijing and Washington had many interactions in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration on January 20. How should we interpret these early interactions, and could they help manage bilateral ties?
But again, these are positive initial signals. It is unlikely to tell us much about the trajectory of where the bilateral relationship will go because China and the US have a lot of structurally competitive issues in the bilateral, regional and global areas. And it is going to take a much more robust period of diplomacy and testing before we can draw firm conclusions about the trajectory of the relationship, given the depth of distrust and policy differences they have to manage.
Many consider this decade critical in the techno-security competition between the US and China, with some calling for a decisive victory over managing the rivalry. What approach do you perceive Trump will adopt in this context, and what is the US’ end goal in competition with China?
There have been a lot of debates over the question of whether the US should have an end-state goal in its China strategy, and if so what that goal should be. The most recent round of debates was triggered by an article Mike Gallagher, the former head of the Select Committee [on the Chinese Communist Party], co-wrote in Foreign Affairs. To be fair, he and his co-author did not exactly posit active strategies to effect regime change in China as the definition of victory. But this is not a widely held view in Washington, nor necessarily within the Republican Party. One theory of the victory prevalent among the “America first” economic team is that the US just keeps doing what it needs to do better, and does not pay attention to what China does. And that is the theory of victory I often hear described as the US “wins” and “we don’t care” what happens to China.
