Quick questions on US-China relations explained: H2 China Studies

For roughly three decades from the start of reform, the relationship was defined by engagement. The United States and the wider West deliberately integrated China into the global economy, trading with it, investing in it, transferring technology, and supporting its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. The strategic premise, the "engagement bet," was that economic integration and growing prosperity would gradually make China more liberal at home and a more cooperative "responsible stakeholder" in the international order, perhaps even moving it toward political reform. For decades the relationship, though punctuated by tensions (over Tiananmen, Taiwan, trade and human rights), was anchored by this logic and by deepening economic interdependence.

In recent years the relationship has shifted decisively toward strategic rivalry. The American consensus moved to the view that the engagement bet had failed: China had grown immensely powerful without liberalising politically, had become more assertive abroad, and was seen as a strategic competitor rather than a prospective partner. This shift produced an open trade conflict, with tariffs imposed in both directions, and, more fundamentally, a technology conflict, with the United States restricting China's access to advanced technologies such as high-end semiconductors and China racing for self-sufficiency. Competition extended across the military, technological, economic and ideological domains.

A central explanation for the rivalry is structural. International-relations theory, drawing on the ancient historian Thucydides, warns of the danger when a rising power approaches the strength of an established, dominant one: the rising power demands more status and influence, the established power fears displacement, and mutual suspicion can drive them toward conflict, the so-called "Thucydides trap." On this reading, the US-China rivalry is the natural and largely inevitable consequence of China's rise toward parity with the United States. As China became the world's second-largest economy and a formidable military power, competition with the reigning power was always likely, regardless of the particular issues in dispute.

The strongest answers insist that structure is not the whole story. The rivalry also has contingent drivers. The collapse of the engagement bet was a specific shift in American thinking and policy. Ideological difference, between a liberal democracy and a one-party state, sharpens mutual distrust and frames the competition as systemic.

The most accurate judgement is that the US-China rivalry is largely the product of a structural power transition, which makes intense competition highly likely, but is not strictly inevitable in its form or its outcome. It is also driven by the failure of engagement, by ideology, and by specific disputes that statecraft could manage or mishandle. War is not predetermined: deep interdependence and nuclear deterrence give both sides strong reasons to keep competition below the threshold of conflict. The rivalry is therefore best understood as structurally driven but contingent in its trajectory, dangerous but not destined for war.

Explain the premise of the "engagement bet." [4 marks]

Explain what the "Thucydides trap" suggests about US-China relations. [12 marks]

"The US-China rivalry is dangerous but not destined for war." How far do you agree? [20 marks]