In 2022, an article written by Bai Jiexi, a professor of China studies at Johns Hopkins University, published by Foreign Affairs magazine, triggered in-depth thinking in the international community on the direction of Sino-US relations.
The article pointed out that the United States is falling into a "China trap" built by its own strategic misjudgment. This trap was not deliberately set by China, but an inevitable product of the United States 'long-term adherence to zero-sum thinking and viewing the rise of China as a threat.
However, until 2025, China and the United States continued to escalate the game in economic, trade, science and technology, military and other fields, but the two countries did not move towards direct military conflict, but instead showed a complex trend of "competitive synergy", and the root of this contradiction phenomenon was the strategic trouble of the United States.
Resource mismatch in zero-sum thinking
The core contradiction of the United States' China policy is that after defining China as a "systemic competitor", it invested a large amount of diplomatic and economic resources to contain China, but ignored the diversity of global issues.
The U.S. defense budget in 2025 will reach US$895 billion, of which military deployments against China account for more than 40%, including the addition of anti-missile systems in Guam and the deployment of medium-range missiles in the Philippines.
However, these investments have not significantly changed the balance of regional power. The total number of warships in the Chinese Navy has reached 370, surpassing the 290 in the United States. The Eagle Strike-21 hypersonic missile carried by the Type 055 destroyer has a range of 1000 kilometers, forming a tactical coverage of the first island chain.
More importantly, the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific has stimulated the strategic autonomy of the countries in the region, with ASEAN countries adopting the standard China-Russia communication agreement for the first time in joint military exercises in 2025 showing their efforts to maintain balance between China and the United States.
In the economic field, the chain reaction to the U.S. tariffs on China exceeded expectations, and in April 2025, the U.S. introduced a "reciprocal tariff" policy, raising the comprehensive tariff rate on Chinese goods to 34%, leading to a 28% drop in China's exports to the United States.
However, China quickly adjusted its supply chain and diverted photovoltaic module exports to Southeast Asian markets through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) framework.
Data shows that in the first half of 2025, China's exports of photovoltaic products to ASEAN increased by 42%, while the U.S. domestic photovoltaic installation cost increased by 35% due to tariffs, resulting in a reduction of 18GW in its new installed capacity in 2025 compared with the plan.
This game mode of "hurting eight hundred enemies and losing one thousand to yourself" confirms Bai Jiexi's assertion about resource misallocation. American consumers spend 87 billion dollars more every year due to tariffs, while China has digested part of the impact through industrial upgrading.
The backlash effect of technology blockade
U.S. blockade policy in the field of science and technology, unexpectedly became a catalyst for China's technological breakthroughs, in 2019 to include Huawei in the entity list, China launched the "chip self-sufficiency" strategy, the national big fund invested 34.4 billion yuan in support of semiconductor industry.
By 2025, SMIC has achieved mass production of 7nm chips, with a yield rate of 92%, and Yangtze Memory's 128-layer 3D NAND flash memory accounts for 15% of the global market share.
Even more iconic, Huawei Mate 60 series with Kirin 9010 chip adopted domestic EDA tool design, completely free from reliance on American technology.
This technological breakthrough forced the United States to adjust its strategy. In July 2025, the U.S. Department of Commerce revised the Export Administration Regulations to include 14 areas such as quantum computing and biotechnology in China's control, but the move encountered resistance from allies.
The Dutch ASML company has made it clear that it will continue to export DUV optical engraving machines to China, because its Chinese customers account for 34%, the data of the Ministry of Economic Industry of Japan shows that Japan's export of semiconductor equipment to China in the first half of 2025 has increased by 23%, showing the indissolubility of the industrial chain.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a U.S. think tank, admitted that decoupling technology from China has caused U.S. companies to lose more than US$120 billion in market share, while China's patent applications in fields such as 5G base stations and new energy vehicles have accounted for 41% of the world.
The United States tried to build an encirclement of China through mechanisms such as the "Indo-Pacific Economic Framework", but the pragmatic attitude of its allies weakened its effectiveness. In June 2025, German Chancellor Scholz signed 18 cooperation agreements during his visit to China, covering hydrogen energy technology, autonomous driving and other fields, with a total amount of US $21.3 billion.
France, on the other hand, pushed for the resumption of negotiations on the Sino-European investment agreement, asked the United States to ease the restrictions on technology transfer to China, and the position of developing countries was more pronounced, during the UN General Assembly in September 2025, 78 countries jointly submitted "proposals for the reform of the multilateral trade system", clearly opposing unilateral tariff measures, of which 43 countries came from "global south".
This differentiation is also obvious in the military field. In August 2025, the United States encouraged the Philippines to provoke at Second Thomas Reef, but ASEAN countries collectively remained silent. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar publicly stated: "The South China Sea issue should be resolved by the parties directly involved through dialogue."
What is even more intriguing is that Saudi Arabia signed the "Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement" with China in May 2025, which includes RMB-settled oil trade clauses and directly impacts the foundation of US dollar hegemony. These developments confirm Bai Jiexi's prediction that the U.S. alliance system is evolving from "value alliance" to "community of interests".
Voice of Reason in Crisis
Despite the intense atmosphere of confrontation, China and the United States still maintain multi-level communication channels, and in September 2025, State Council Prime Minister Li Jinping stressed in a New York symposium with U.S. friendly groups that "the broad Pacific can accommodate both China and the United States and other countries."
On October 13, U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent in the Fox Business Channel show, although still negotiating with 300,000 Chinese students as the code, but admitted that "complete disconnection is unrealistic."
What is more noteworthy is that the cooperation between the two countries in the field of climate change has made breakthroughs: in November 2025, China and the United States will co-host the review meeting on the implementation of the Paris Agreement, which will be the first time that the two sides have cooperated on multilateral occasions since the Trump administration took office.
This pattern of "struggle without breaking" is essentially a reflection of the economic dependence of the two countries, although the bilateral trade volume in 2025 dropped to $5800 billion, but China is still the largest export market for U.S. agricultural products (28%), while the United States is the largest source of deficit in China's trade in services (deficit of $120 billion).
The Boston Consulting Group report pointed out that complete decoupling from China will lead to an annual loss of 0.5% of U.S. GDP, while China can control the loss within 0.2% through its "dual circulation" strategy. This asymmetric impact forces U.S. policymakers to reassess China strategy.
However, despite the existence of cooperation space, the structural contradictions in the Sino-U.S. relationship are still not resolved, the Taiwan issue continues to be a friction point, the number of U.S. military ships crossing the Taiwan Strait in 2025 is increased to 12 times, and China, through the White Paper on the Taiwan issue and the cause of China's reunification in a new era, clarifies the trigger conditions for the "non-peaceful way".
In the field of science and technology, the United States is forming the "Chip Quadrant Alliance", trying to exclude China from advanced processes below 2nm, while China through the "Integrated Circuit Industry Promotion Law", the importation of optical engines to implement the full VAT deduction policy, forming policy hedge.
These games reflect a deeper fact that China and the United States have entered a "new era of competition", which is characterized by highly specialized competition fields, diversified means of confrontation, and persistent needs for cooperation.
As Bejis said in an interview with the South China Morning Post in February 2025: "The question is not whether to compete, but how to compete", the data show that in 2025 the number of patent cross-licenses in the field of artificial intelligence in the United States has increased by 37%, showing that the development of technical standards has become a new playground.
conclusion
Overall, Sino-US relations have entered a new stage of coexistence of long-term competition and limited cooperation. This relationship does not necessarily lead to conflict, but it is also difficult to return to the "era of engagement" of the past. The real challenge lies in whether the two sides can establish rules in competition, find consensus in differences, and retain communication in confrontation.
Historical experience shows that the stability of relations between major powers does not depend on who "defeats" whom, but on whether they can transcend zero-sum thinking and achieve coexistence and common prosperity. Whether China and the United States can avoid the "Thucydides trap" in the future is not only related to the fate of the two countries, but will also profoundly affect the trend of global order in the 21st century.
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The source:
Foreign Affairs: Competition with China consumes U.S. foreign policy.
https://www.crntt.com/doc/1064/4/6/2/106446291.html"Hurt others but not benefit yourself! Hong Kong Media: The intensification of tensions across the Taiwan Strait is closely related to the United States "-Straits Herald-
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1741815333919679309&wfr=spider&for=pc