Is a China-US cold war inevitable? Chinese analysts say it can’t be ruled out
- Experts hold little hope for relations when ideology starts to define rivalry between Washington and Beijing
- ‘Counter-China’ coalition in US could last beyond Trump years as ‘far-right populists’ take grip of policymaking, they say
Competition between the US and China could escalate into a cold war-style rivalry as “counter-China” and “far-right populist” policymakers dominate the White House, Chinese academics say.
Zhao Minghao, a senior fellow at the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said he surveyed a number of Chinese academics who concluded that “the possibility of a major US-China confrontation and armed conflict can by no means be ruled out”.
Writing in the Chinese Journal of International Politics, Zhao said the US-China rivalry went far beyond trade and “the shifting mood in favour of a [US] post-engagement policy towards China” would go beyond President Donald Trump’s years in the White House.
“To some extent, [the consensus] is a counter-China coalition composed of far-right populists, security hawks and hard-to-impress radicals – one which calls for a bellicose approach to dealing with China,” he said.
One of the academics surveyed was Yan Xuetong, an international relations professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, who was pessimistic about relations because the tensions between Washington and Beijing were becoming more ideological than economic.