China and the US: Great Power Faceoff
This is the 18th in the annual series of Strategic
Asia, a landmark program of the National Bureau of Asian Research in Seattle. Here, 14 renowned China experts, sharing the recognition that decades of US engagement policy has failed liberal expectations, assess China’s global quest for great-power status to draw out countervailing strategies for the US.
There appears now a bipartisan consensus in the US that China has evolved to be a strategic competitor, a great power challenging American primacy, as spelled out in the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy in December 2017. Standing firmly on this consensual view, this volume explores China’s expansive activities from the
Arctic to Asia to the Indian Ocean, and its role in reshaping the international financial architecture. Beijing has also aimed to pursue “values diplomacy,” with its values and aspirations contributing to the transformation of the international system from the “current unipolarity toward a new bipolarity.”
The authors suggest optimal strategies for the US in two dimensions: in the economic realm, it should aim at gaining the maximum possible benefits from international trade for itself and its friends, while simultaneously cutting the asymmetric gains that China has enjoyed thus far. And on the geopolitical front, Washington should deepen solidarity with its allies while paying consistent attention to addressing the problems of military modernization in order to preserve its military hegemony.