Great Power Competition as the New Normal of China-US Relations

Will China–U.S. relations come back to the normal track? Does the confrontational approach work for China–US relations? This book argues that it is an unrealistic hope to bring China–US relations back to the so-called normal track because the great power competition will be a new normal of China–US relations and the USA will gain more from strategic competition than cooperation in the long run. This book shows that the strategy of “great power cooperation through competition” is more positive and constructive than the approaches of “peaceful coexist” and “maximum pressure.” This book does not intend to provide policy recommendations for governments to consider, but mainly to explain why the great power competition is inevitable and why it is necessary to continuously work with China in some areas through strategic competition. This book alarms the importance of understanding the nature of the Chinese Communist Party during the great power competition and aims to motivate both sides to revisit their foreign policy practice and come up with a better foreign policy strategy of handling China–US relations.

Jinghao Zhou is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York, USA. His research focuses on Chinese ideology, politics, religions, and US–China relations. He has five books published which are as follows: Why Is the China Model Losing Its Power? (2020), Chinese vs. Western Perspectives: Understanding Contemporary China (2014), China’s Peaceful Rise in a Global Context: A Domestic Aspect of China’s Road Map to Democratization (2010), Remaking China’s Public Philosophy and Chinese Women’s Liberation: The volatile mixing of Confucianism, Marxism, and Feminism (2006), and Remaking China’s Public Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century (2003).