How to Understand the United States and China

by Kurt M. Campbell and Ely Ratner

Washington has an outsize sense of its ability to determine China’s course, yet both carrots and sticks have failed to sway Beijing as predicted. That reality warrants a rethinking of U.S. China policy.

by Wang Jisi; J. Stapleton Roy; Aaron Friedberg; Thomas Christensen and Patricia Kim; Joseph S. Nye, Jr.; Eric Li; Kurt M. Campbell and Ely Ratner

Experts respond to Kurt M. Campbell and Ely Ratner’s “The China Reckoning.” Should underlying assumptions about the U.S.-Chinese relationship be reassessed? If so, what does this mean for U.S. policy toward Beijing?

by Oriana Skylar Mastro

China does not want to replace the United States at the top of the international system. It wants to alter global norms and institutions—and have the power to counter Washington when needed. 

by Yan Xuetong

The question is not whether a bipolar U.S.-Chinese order will come to be but what this order will look like. At least for now, confrontation will play out in economic and technological, rather than military, realms. 

by Elizabeth C. Economy

Xi Jinping has consolidated his personal power and accelerated a shift toward a more activist foreign policy. For the first time, China is an illiberal state seeking leadership in a liberal world order.

by Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew Scobell

The United States worries about China’s rise, but at the same time policymakers in Beijing puzzle over whether the United States intends to use its power to help or hurt China.

by Yuen Yuen Ang

Since opening its markets in 1978, China has used bureaucratic reform to maintain single-party control while reaping the benefits of capitalism. But under Xi Jinping, the limits of this approach are beginning to loom large.

by Henry A. Kissinger

A contest for supremacy between China and the United States is not inevitable. Beijing and Washington owe it to themselves, and the world, to resist the forces pushing them toward conflict.