China-U.S. Strategic Collaboration: Four Cases and Their Lessons

Abstract

The China-U.S. relationship has entered a new phase of “competition.” A fundamental shift in Washington’s China policy under President Trump’s watch intensified strategic competition to the extent of nearly eliminating any possibility of cooperation. As Washington resorts to a policy of “containment and suppression,” competition will be the defining feature of the bilateral relationship for the foreseeable future and the focus of China-U.S. diplomacy should be on risk control, crisis stability, and getting around the Thucydides Trap. Even if growing strategic competition seems inescapable, there are plenty of shared interests and common concerns that warrant closer coordination between the two superpowers. The most pressing issue is how to restart the engine of cooperation under the Biden presidency after almost all the available avenues of coordination have been shut down by the Trump administration. Beijing and Washington may have calibrated their strategic objectives and developed new perceptions of each other as they find themselves in a new balance of power and profoundly changed circumstances, but some of the success stories of bilateral strategic collaboration over the past forty years since normalization still hold important lessons, and a world of growing uncertainty has rendered those lessons even more relevant for today’s bilateral relationship.