The United States (US) and the People라이브 바카라 Republic of China (PRC) have been engaged in fighting multiple battles parallelly, and Donald Trump라이브 바카라 return to power has given a strong and rather combative impetus to this process. This has to do with the fact that China has emerged as a confident and ambitious global player with aspirations for even more power and status in the international order and the US, on the other hand, sees China as a destabiliser. In essence, this is a battle between the existing hegemony and a challenger that is no longer hiding its intent. Technology, economy, global status, norms and the future of Taiwan are some of the core areas of US-China competition.
This was epitomised recently with the launch of DeepSeek—the Chinese artificial intelligence tool which is more efficient and productive than the US-made ChatGPT. This has been seen as a modern Sputnik moment as well. DeepSeek라이브 바카라 launch also coincided with the ten-year report of the Made in China 2025 initiative, which listed that China was way ahead of its targets and as announced in the National People라이브 바카라 Congress (NPC), China is on track to lead the world in smart manufacturing in the years to come.
China has historically benefitted from being in the right place at the right time and, as Trump has unleashed his trade war and deglobalisation drive, it will try to do that once again. China will not play Trump라이브 바카라 game shot for shot but will be selective in responding, both in terms of its language as well as its strategy. However, its vocabulary will be one of criticising Trump and the US about deglobalisation. For a while now, China has emerged as a patron voice of globalisation, and it comes with the goal to delegitimise American power and its values. China has just about begun the influence phase of its great power status, and the US withdrawal from its great power commitments and from its leadership position, is good news for China.
The Economic Front
The US and China라이브 바카라 combined share of world Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2024 was 43.1 per cent. They are in a phase which the liberal theory of international relations calls complex interdependence. Their total bilateral trade in goods was $582.4 billion in 2024, out of which $438.9 billion was the share of Chinese exports to the US and $143.5 billion, the US export to China. Thus, trade has benefitted both the sides, but it has generated more jobs in China and created more value for the US businesses and consumers as well. The intended decoupling is going to impact not only the two countries, but will have consequences for the world economy and for the liberal world order as well. Fears of recession have already affected stock markets worldwide.
What China projects as ‘reform’ of the UNited nations and other global systems, is in turn a revision of the liberal order. Its efforts to replace liberal values may have longterm implications.
Regardless of what the Chinese leadership says, China still needs the US and European markets for its domestic businesses to grow. China라이브 바카라 efforts like common prosperity and dual circulation have achieved modest results at best. It is yet to recover from the housing crisis and its previous rough treatment of Jack Ma라이브 바카라 Ant Corp amidst the political slogan of wanting to eliminate the ‘disorderly expansion of capital’, has had a ripple effect on private business investment in China. This has been reversed only recently as Xi Jinping met the leading private tech entrepreneurs and reiterated strong support for their innovation and development. Xi has realised, even if belatedly, that he needs all the engines firing to fight America라이브 바카라 latest onslaught. China has already benefitted from Trump라이브 바카라 return as was visible in the European outreach to China in 2024. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was accompanied by nearly 70 corporate leaders who have business interests in China. Europe has suffered due to the Russia-Ukraine war, and it has sought to do business with China as its economy showed signs of revival in the second half of 2024.
Strategic Objectives
China라이브 바카라 ultimate aim is to replace the US and become the pre-eminent power in the world. China라이브 바카라 foreign policy often uses the vocabulary of ‘China attaining the rightful place’ in the world and it is as if to say that this position should belong to China. Today, China sees itself at the cusp of a significant moment where it has a window of opportunity to achieve this pending goal. From a Chinese perspective, this moment is historically driven, and the pursuit of the China Dream is indeed an aspiration that Xi wants to fulfil wherein China라이브 바카라 power is matched by its global status. On more than one occasion, Xi has used the expression, “The world today is undergoing major changes unseen in a century” in which the Party faces “unprecedented opportunities and unprecedented challenges”.
Regardless of what the Chinese leadership says, China still needs the US and European markets for its domestic businesses to grow. China라이브 바카라 efforts like common prosperity and dual circulation have achieved modest results at best.
China was happier to deal with the Biden administration after the turbulent years of the first Trump administration. However, it chose to start with a confrontationist approach. During the Alaska Summit, Wang Yi said in front of the cameras that “the US had no right to talk to China from a position of strength”. This came on the back of other confrontations on issues of Xinjiang, cybersecurity, Taiwan and Hong Kong, but also from the assessment that there was a bipartisan consensus in the US on containing China라이브 바카라 rise. China has been seeking parity in global rule-making since the days of Barack Obama, through initiatives like the G2 in the aftermath of the global economic crisis of 2008. However, the US responded to it with the Pivot to Asia strategy and continued to expand its military engagement in the region. It also accepted the vocabulary of Indo Pacific and expanded the idea of ‘rules-based order’, which China says is aimed at curtailing its rights and leadership role in the region. China has always looked for an alternative development narrative. Now, it has the capacity to back up its wish list. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is already over ten years old and China has expanded it. Its three recent initiatives: the Global Security Initiative (GSI), the Global Development Initiative (GDI) and the Global Civilizational Initiative (GCI) indicate that China has started the process wherein it wants to replace the US, in the United Nations (UN) and outside, as the global norm setter and as a provider of global public goods. China is also actively seeking a reform of global governance system and Trump라이브 바카라 withdrawal and discrediting the United Nations (UN) boosts the Chinese game plan. UN documents already include Chinese vocabulary of common and collective security which is a not so tacit criticism of the US hegemony and unilateralism. From a Chinese perspective, multilateralism may lead to multipolarity through dilution of the American power and create a vacuum for China to fill.
However, what China projects as ‘reform’ of the UN and other global systems, is in turn a revision of the liberal order. Its efforts to replace liberal values may have longterm implications. For example, Wang Yi라이브 바카라 recent speech at the UN Human Rights Council talks of ‘‘upholding the right approach to human rights’’, recommends, “rights to subsistence and development as fundamental human rights of primary importance” and “safeguarding national sovereignty, security and dignity, and taking a balanced approach to individual and collective rights”, which is a significant departure from the prevalent understanding of human rights as individual rights.
On Taiwan
Taiwan has been a significant point of friction between China and the US. China has declared its goal of Taiwan라이브 바카라 reunification with the mainland and has made the redlines adequately clear. Recently, China announced that its defense budget in 2025 will grow at 7.2 per cent, which while the same as last year, still outpaces its economic growth target of 5 per cent. China라이브 바카라 military exercises in 2023 and 2024 have largely been Taiwan focused, and the US has hardly had any deterrent role in what China has been doing. China라이브 바카라 exercises have focused on large, quick and diversified deployment. These exercises have tested and demonstrated China라이브 바카라 operational readiness for a Taiwan scenario since the helicopters and the amphibious ships have undertaken exercises, which mimic beach landing or covering distances that proximate Taiwan라이브 바카라 coast from the mainland. At the same time, its support capacity has been deployed to work out the anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy or what China calls the active defense strategy. The future live-fire exercises may be brought closer to the Taiwan territory based on the message that China perceives from Trump.
More than a Simple Trade War
Lastly, the US-China rivalry pushes the ultra-nationalists in China to question their government라이브 바카라 alleged inefficiencies. While the US is pushing China, Trump is also reviewing the US security guarantees in the region. The combination of domestic nationalism and altered regional security environment may push China to undertake risks that it has avoided so far, and it may have far worse consequences than just a simple trade war.
(Views expressed are personal)
Avinash Godbole is Professor and Associate Academic Dean at JSLH, Jindal Global University
This article is a part of 바카라's April 1, 2025 issue 'World At Reset', which explores the ongoing changes in the global geopolitical order. It appeared in print as 'ReOrient'.
