Three Ways the US and China Can Rival Without Ruin
The Trump-Xi summit in Beijing may temporarily reduce tensions in the world's most consequential bilateral relationship. Yet one uncomfortable truth persists: neither nation can escape the rivalry, and neither can win it outright.
The real question, according to analysis published in The Conversation, is whether Washington and Beijing can prevent their competition from becoming catastrophic. War is not preordained—but avoiding it requires deliberate choices across three distinct arenas.
The Most Dangerous Flashpoint: Taiwan
Beijing views Taiwan as a matter of sovereignty and national will. Washington sees it through the lens of credibility—proof that the United States can still guarantee security in the Indo-Pacific.
Both sides claim to be defending the status quo. Both believe the other is undermining it. Both are taking actions that make conflict more likely.
The solution is not unilateral concession. Mutual restraint backed by clearer political reassurance offers a better path forward.
China could dial back the military aircraft sorties, naval patrols, and drone operations near Taiwan. The United States could avoid blurring the line between supporting Taiwan and endorsing formal independence.
Trust is not required. Clarity and restraint are.
Institutional Competition: Rivalry With Upsides
During the Cold War, Washington and Moscow eventually recognized that an unmanaged arms race was too perilous to sustain. Washington and Beijing have not yet reached that level of strategic maturity.
The United States has built alignments like the Quad and AUKUS. China counters with BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Both work to shape regional and global institutions that extend their influence while constraining the other's.
This institutional competition has upsides. It pushes organizations to adapt rather than stagnate—and creates incentives for rival powers to provide public goods like infrastructure, development financing, and climate initiatives to win support from other nations.
China's Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank have expanded options for developing countries. The United States and its partners have responded with their own initiatives.
This is why sweeping economic decoupling would be a mistake. Some restrictions in sensitive sectors may be unavoidable. But severing economic ties entirely would eliminate one of the few remaining guardrails keeping the relationship stable.
The Ideological Danger Zone
American policymakers often frame the rivalry as defending the liberal international order against authoritarian revisionism. Chinese leaders see a struggle against containment, humiliation, and foreign interference.
These are not merely different narratives. They shape what each side finds threatening, acceptable, or non-negotiable. They explain why the relationship has become so politically and emotionally charged.
Ideological competition is safest when it remains indirect. Neither capital is likely to convert the other. Neither is likely to persuade the wider world through lectures.
The sounder strategy is competing by example—showing that each model can deliver competence, economic vitality, and cooperation.
The more Washington casts the competition as a global struggle between democracy and autocracy, the more Beijing interprets compromise as capitulation. The more Beijing wraps its foreign policy in anti-hegemonic rhetoric, the more Washington sees its own restraint as weakness.
The Core Risk
The greatest risk is that both sides come to see restraint as weakness, compromise as surrender, and coexistence as impossible. Once that happens, catastrophe becomes far more likely.
The goal is not friendship or reconciliation. It is something more modest and more urgent: competition without war.
Based on: Analysis on US-China Relations; The Conversation.