US-China escalation inevitable – root cause of rivalry is perception that one is stronger than the other
Hass 3/7 [Ryan Hass is director of the John L. Thornton China Center and the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies at Brookings. He is also a senior fellow in the Center for Asia Policy Studies. He was part of the inaugural class of David M. Rubenstein fellows at Brookings, and is a nonresident affiliated fellow in the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. Hass focuses his research and analysis on enhancing policy development on the pressing political, economic, and security challenges facing the United States in East Asia; “How does national confidence inform US-China relations?”, March 7, 2024; https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-does-national-confidence-inform-us-china-relations/]
None of the popular narratives in either country capture the root causes for the intensifying competition. At their core, both countries believe their governance and economic models are best equipped to meet the 21st century’s challenges. Both believe they are natural leaders in Asia and on the world stage. Both countries are contending with rapid societal transformations, which are being exacerbated by the impacts of the fourth industrial revolution. And both countries are determined to limit vulnerabilities to the other while seeking to gain an edge in emerging technologies. This is all occurring while the United States and China remain unsatisfyingly locked into a relationship that is at once both competitive and interdependent. In other words, the United States and China are competing to demonstrate which governance, economic, and social system can deliver the best results in the 21st century.
This notion of competing governance and social systems goes a long way toward explaining the rivalrous nature of relations, but it does not explain why bilateral tensions have intensified and accelerated in recent years. To better understand this trend, one must also place the current moment in a historical context.
This paper introduces a new variable for understanding the rivalry’s rising intensity. It argues that the United States and China presently find themselves in a simultaneous cycle of insecurity and dissatisfaction with their national conditions. Like when U.S. and PRC national down cycles have coincided in the past, this simultaneity is serving as a propellant in both countries for framing the national contest for power and influence in dramatic and, to some, existential terms.