Peaceful coexistence

• It doesn’t represent the tense geopolitical landscape saturated with sanctions, investment restrictions and containment efforts.
• These overtures come on the heels of concentrated American efforts against what the U.S. perceives to be China’s increasing expansion and assertiveness in Asia.
• President Joe Biden’s administration has made its intentions clear about maintaining the status quo in Asia, and Beijing is responding cautiously.

Conflicting policies

• In 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested the Barack Obama administration wanted to go further than Bush had in developing the China-U.S. relationship:
  “We need a comprehensive dialogue with China.
• The strategic dialogue that was begun in the Bush administration turned into an economic dialogue.”
  “We need a comprehensive dialogue with China.
• During Donald Trump’s administration, U.S. policy priorities on China shifted back to economic relations as the trade deficit between the two nations became a central point of contention.
• The Trump approach was no longer dialogue, but rather direct confrontation.

Chinese pragmatism

• Since the 1990s, China has been explicit in its grand objective of a multi-polar world in which global politics is shaped by several dominant states.
• When Xi Jinping ascended to the presidency in 2013, this aspiration became increasingly overt and assertive.
• But even though China trails the U.S. in many areas, it doesn’t need American support as much as it used to.
• Astonishingly rapid development in the last two decades is probably still far from China’s most creative and innovative phase.

American limitations

• There are also limits to the American field of influence in the region.
• The U.S. has failed to move beyond strengthening existing alliances and fortifying its military installations.
• China is not deterred by American policy.
• Will China abide by its Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and its claim that it will never seek world domination?

Four indicators of what lies ahead

• Several indicators, however, point to a somewhat balanced co-existence between the two as dominant power centres in the coming decades.
• Second, China is already present around the globe in terms of human capital, investment, manufactured products — and world public opinion about China is changing.
• Third, to use the Taoist metaphor, China is a hub that has many spokes and has the capacity and will to invent many more.
• The hub is united and efficient; an economic downturn will only slow the social organism, not cause it to collapse.