Would There Be Two Tigers Living in the Same Mountain? The Geostrategic Implications of China’s Rise for U.S.-China Relations

Abstract

In the past three decades China has sustained an economic growth with a speed and scale unprecedented in human history. This has sounded an alarm and caused concerns among many Americans who are worried about the prospect that China will one day rise to a superpower and be a threat to the United States. China is anticipated to pose a threat to the United States in two ways: first, China may challenge specific U.S. security or other vital national interests, and second, over the long term, China may eventually rival the United States for world dominance. China’s rise as a superpower therefore depends on the probabilities of three subevents: the sustainability of China’s current growth, the potential for conflicts of interests between the two countries, and China’s intention to challenge the U.S. hegemony. This chapter tries to evaluate the prospect of China’s anticipated threat to the United States by examining the likelihood of each subevent and the factors that influence their respective probability. Then, on the basis of such analysis, I will proceed to put forward policy recommendations for the United States that may help reduce the risk of the worst case scenario—facing a powerful, hostile, and revisionist China in the future.