The Competitive Strategy and Adjustment of the US Trump Administration's China Policy/竞争战略与美国特朗普政府对华政策调整

Abstract

The Competitive Strategy, which helped the US gain great advantages in competition with its major rivals, has played an important part in US foreign policy for a long time. The full use of it in the cold war with Soviet Union is the most significant case. In recent years, under the promotion of the academic circle and the strategic circle, the concept of a competitive strategy is rapidly returning into the US foreign strategy, becoming an important theoretical basis for the adjustment of the Trump Administration's China policy. Recently, the United States has taken multi-domain actions simultaneously to strengthen the strategic competition and containment policies against China, such as mobilizing public opinion, provoking China-related issues, creating new weaponized legislation and even increasingly making use of Taiwan and Hong Kong to contain China. Under this competition situation, China must balance the whole picture and the critical point, make proper adjustments accordingly while sticking to their bottom-line priorities. Only in this way can China relieve the pressure and gain the initiative to effectively manage competition with the US. During this course, China should make more effort in improving its capacity and level of governance, strengthening the domestic foundation of competition against the US. Meanwhile, China should also actively adapt itself to the changing world and make full use of the situation to guide the direction of the China-US relationship.

Key Words: Strategic competition; China-US relationship; Competition management; Counterbalancing ability