Not a “New Era”—Historical Memory and Continuities in U.S.-China Rivalry

At first glance, the return to a world of great power rivalry may seem sudden.¹ The National Defense Strategy, published in January 2018, highlighted the “reemergence of long-term, strategic competition” against such great power rivals as Russia and China as the “central challenge” to U.S. interests and security.² The notion of a new era has become pervasive and nearly inescapable in both American and Chinese discourse, and the phrasing may, at first, appear entirely appropriate. After decades in which U.S. policy has been more oriented towards engagement, U.S. strategy today clearly and explicitly recognizes China as a competitor, seemingly undertaking a historic reorientation in ways that can be seen as reflecting a major discontinuity with the past.³ At the same time, Xi Jinping often alluded to the notion of a new era (新时代), in which China is increasingly contesting American global leadership.⁴ However, the typical turning to this phrasing of a new era to characterize recent trends in U.S.-China relations, while perhaps rhetorically appropriate, can obscure what is not new, emphasizing novelty at the expense of recognizing the history and relative consistency in certain aspects of U.S.-China relations. That is, this common characterization of the 2017-2018 timeframe, as marking the start of a distinct epoch of strategic competition between China and the United States, confers a newness to this era of great power rivalry that can be greatly exaggerated, at the expense of recognizing the influence of the past couple of decades of history on the trajectory of U.S.-China relations.

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