Avoiding the ‘Thucydides Trap’

Dong Wang is Associate Professor at the School of International Studies and Executive Director of the Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding (iGCU), Peking University. He has written extensively on U.S.-China relations and China’s foreign policy.Travis N. Tanner is President of the U.S.-China Strong Foundation. Based in Beijing, Mr. Tanner has more than 15 years of experience working on U.S.-China relations. Mr. Tanner is the author, contributing author, or co-editor of numerous publications on the strategic, economic, and political dimensions of the U.S.-China relationship, including five volumes of the Strategic Asia series.

This volume, explains, from various experts’ perspectives, how China and the United States should defend their respective interests, manage differences, mitigate crisis, and avoid conflict in various strategic domains including maritime, nuclear, cyber and space. As the book correctly points out, "The central challenge to improve strategic stability between the United States and China is finding ways to enhance collaboration and mitigate sources of tension". This book has made highly valuable efforts toward achieving this goal. The U.S.-China relationship will significantly impact the 21st Century, therefore, this book merits careful study by all those who are concerned with the future of global stability.—Chen Xiaogong (Lt. General, Ret.), former Deputy Director of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and former Deputy Commander of the PLA Air Force. Having assembled experts from leading Chinese and American research institutions and think tanks, this volume presents a series of the most cutting-edge joint research findings across the following six strategic domains: maritime, nuclear, cyber, space, military-to-military relations, and people-to-people exchange. This book, through in-depth theoretical analysis, provides an authoritative answer to the centennial question of whether or not China and the United States are destined to fall into the "Thucydides Trap". I firmly believe that this volume will become one of the classic studies on China-U.S. strategic relations. It should be read by anyone who is concerned about the future of China-U.S. ties, and thus, I hope it reaches a wide audience. —Zhou Wenzhong, former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, former Chinese Ambassador to the United States The 2018 National Security Strategy of the United States defines the reemergence of long-term, strategic competition with China as the central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security. This volume is an indispensable resource in understanding the nature of this challenge and of the U.S. strategy, a key component of which is to set the military relationship between China and the United States on a path of transparency and non-aggression.—Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Ambassador to China, J. Stapleton Roy A landmark study. An admirable work by a group of leading experts from both the US and China that aims to tackle some of the most sensitive, most difficult, and most thorny strategic issues facing the US-China relationship. A must-read for anyone who is concerned about the prospects of US-China relations.—Former Commander of U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Thomas Fargo (U.S. Navy, Ret.)

• Introduction Wang Dong and Travis Tanner1 U.S.-China Relations in the Maritime Security Domain Wang Dong and Christopher Yung 2 Seeking Strategic Stability for U.S.-China Relations in the Nuclear Domain Elbridge A. Colby and Wu Riqiang3 Reducing and Managing U.S.-China Conflict in Cyberspace Adam Segal and Tang Lan4 U.S.-China Strategic Relations in Space Brian Weeden and Xiao He5 Stepping Up Investments in U.S.-China Relations: Making People-to-People Exchange a Strategic Priority Travis Tanner and Zhao Minghao6 Sino-U.S. Military-to-Military Relations Roy D. Kamphausen with Jessica Drun7 Sino-US Military Relations: Interests, Challenges, and Solution Xu Hui with Yu Ying Conclusion Wang Dong and Tiffany Ma