DIIS Report

Why rivalry is likely to trump partnership

Examining US-China relations under Trump

No bilateral relationship is more critical to international order than that between China and the United States. By far the two largest economies in the world, as well as its two biggest military spenders, China and the United States seem to be in a league of their own on the international stage.

However, rather than forming a leadership tandem that jointly manages international order, Beijing and Washington have in recent years often found themselves at loggerheads over bilateral trade, human rights issues or the South China Sea.

This new DIIS report by Andreas Bøje Forsby takes stock of US-China relations half a year into Donald Trump’s presidency. The report argues that although Trump and Xi now seem to have established some sort of cooperative working relationship in the wake of their first summit in April, US-China relations remain highly unstable, being shaped by deep-seated conflicts of interest that tend to pit the two countries against each other in a state of rivalry.

Moreover, the report finds only limited evidence of any strong shared interests, a case in point being the Trump administration’s inclination to frame bilateral trade relations in terms of zero-sum competition rather than win-win cooperation.

The report also takes a closer look at two highly contested arenas where key strategic interests are at stake for both Washington and Beijing, namely the Korean Peninsula and the South China Sea. It is argued that while, on balance, the Trump administration has so far refrained from directly challenging Chinese interests in these two arenas, contentious issues like the US deployment of the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea and the recent resumption of US Freedom of Navigation operations in the South China Sea are likely to have a destabilizing effect on US-China relations under Trump.

Having officially abandoned Obama’s 'Rebalance to Asia', the Trump administration has yet to formulate a new coherent strategy for its engagement in Asia in general and its relationship with China in particular. Against this backdrop, the report points out that the primacy of domestic concerns in Donald Trump’s presidency, as encapsulated in his notorious America First slogan, may turn out to be the main factor in keeping some measure of stability in US-China relations.

From a Danish perspective, US-China relations should be a key concern, since Washington and Beijing constitute Denmark’s most important partners outside the EU. The Danish government therefore needs to prepare itself for how to navigate on the international stage between Washington and Beijing if great power rivalry sets in.

DIIS Experts

Andreas Bøje Forsby
Foreign policy and diplomacy
Senior Researcher
none
Striking a New Balance?
US-China Relations under Trump