The United States and China are separated not only by divergent interests, some of which might be reconciled, but by incompatible visions for the future of Asia and the world.
There appears to be a growing consensus in Washington, and in the capitals of many other advanced industrial democracies, that prevailing policies towards China have failed and that an alternative approach is now urgently required. In a recent, widely read article in Foreign Affairs, two former Obama-administration officials conclude that, after years of ‘hopeful thinking’ about China’s future, the United States finds itself confronting ‘its most dynamic and formidable competitor in modern history’.Republican Senator Marco Rubio describes the challenge in similar terms, noting that in the 240 years since its founding, the United States has never before ‘faced an adversary of this scale, scope, and capacity’. ‘Decades of optimism about China’s rise have been discarded’, declares The Economist. ‘We got China wrong’, writes an editorialist for the Washington Post. ‘Now what?’