By Alexander Lukin
Global Times1
Sino-US relations have reached their worst point at least since 1972 as the Trump administration has taken an extremely hardline stance against China. There are several reasons for this. The fundamental general reason is geopolitical: competition between a rising power and an established power.
Professor Graham Allison described it in his Thucydides Trap theory. However, this competition can be realized in various forms and historically has not inevitably led to a war. In the current situation when it can lead to a nuclear catastrophe and when the world is much more globalized than before, there are a lot of new factors that reduce the likelihood of the toughest scenarios. They, however, do not make a war absolutely impossible. A lot will depend on other factors, including personal leadership.
There are several theories about the current Sino-US confrontation. One maintains that the main reason of its intensity is the difference between the ideology and political systems. According to this view, after World War II, it was much easier for the UK to cede its dominate position in the world to the US because the two countries were allies and shared their values and general worldview.
They also had a common threat coming from the USSR and its camp. Another theory says that the conflict was inevitable anyway, and that the previous period of cooperation was just a preparation for confrontation when China was not strong enough to seriously challenge the US. According to a third point of view, the current period of confrontation is not normal and Sino-US relations eventually are going to become much more constructive when they both realize that cooperation in the globalizing world serves their basic interests much better.
I believe that all these theories should be considered, but the real situation will depend on the specific policies on both sides. A certain level of confrontation is inevitable. The disappointment in the US elites with the loss of their country's dominant status in the world has been growing for a long time. Of course, they could not blame this on their own policy mistakes or general historical trends because in their view, history was bound to end with a triumphant US. So China's growth was an obvious scapegoat. History could not go wrong, China had to have cheated it.
This is the reason for Washington's claims that China cheated the US; it used Washington's preferential policies to become stronger but failed to change according to Washington's wishes. In reality, the US policy of cooperation with China served American interests of the time. In the 1970s, Washington tried to use China against the Soviet Union. Later, US companies used China's cheap labor and got enormous profits. So both sides were interested in cooperation. The problem was that the US elites failed to understand certain major trends of history. They thought that China was going to change and become pro-US, but in fact the world was becoming more multipolar and the period of American domination was coming to an end. As American scholar Andrew Kuchins aptly put it, the (American style) end of history ended.
Difference in ideology and political system is a very important factor which China tends to underestimate. The political systems of the two countries are so different and even opposing that it is very difficult for the US to accept any of China's influence in the world. If we take the comparison with the US-UK post World War II situation, a change of allegiance of a third country from the UK to the US was insignificant at that time, because the two powers were allies. Now any country which becomes friendly to
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