From Thucydides Trap to parallel national rejuvenation: China-US relations to transformation

More than half a century ago, the United States and China began transforming one of the world’s most consequential rivalries into a relationship that would reshape the international order prerequisite for peace and prosperity around the globe.

Upon arriving in the United States on Wednesday for a three-day state visit at the invitation of U.S. President Donald Trump, Chinese President in a written speech said, “The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand, complement each other and benefit the world.” He added that China and the United States should be “partners, not rivals.”

The formulation offers a distinctly different answer to what Harvard professor Graham Allison has called the metaphor of Greek historian’s “Thucydides Trap” – the danger that a rising power and an established power become locked in a confrontation because of the fear generated by shifting power.

Allison’s modern interpretation has been widely applied to China-U.S. relations. Yet history also contains a different lesson: great powers can change the trajectory of their relationship through political choices, strategic restraint and practical cooperation.

In 1971, when the Cold War divided the world into competing blocs, American and Chinese table tennis players created an unexpected opening. The “Ping-Pong diplomacy” helped prepare the ground for Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to Beijing and Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China in February 1972.

The U.S. Office of the Historian describes Nixon’s trip as the first visit by a sitting U.S. president to the Chinese mainland. It culminated in the Shanghai Communiqué, in which the two sides acknowledged their profound differences while establishing principles for a new relationship.

The opening was not based on ideological agreement. It was based on recognition that two powerful states could have conflicting interests while still finding sufficient common ground to prevent those differences from producing permanent hostility.

Xi recalled that history at a banquet for Trump in Beijing in May. “Fifty-five years ago, ‘Ping-Pong diplomacy’ was carried out between our two countries,” Xi said. “The door that had remained frozen for over 20 years was opened.”

He added that China and the United States had since written “many chapters of friendship through mutual opening up to each other and cooperation.”

On Jan. 1, 1979, Washington and Beijing formally established diplomatic relations. Their joint communiqué stated that both sides wished “to reduce the danger of international military conflict” and that normalization served not only the interests of the Chinese and American peoples but also “the cause of peace in Asia and the world.”

That sentence contains an idea that remains relevant today: bilateral relations between major powers have consequences beyond their borders. China and the United States did not eliminate their differences in 1972. They managed them. They did not erase their disagreements in 1979. They created diplomatic mechanisms through which those disagreements could be addressed. And economic engagement subsequently created another layer of interdependence.

This is the foundation of the argument that the Thucydides Trap is not destiny. Xi made the point explicitly in 2013, during his meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama at Sunnylands in California.

“I stated very clearly to Obama that China will be firmly committed to the path of peaceful development,” Xi said, adding that China would work to realize “the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation” and promote peace and development.

The proposed model was described through three principles: no conflict or confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation. The logic was straightforward. If China’s development is treated as inherently threatening, China’s rise can generate countermeasures, countermeasures can generate insecurity, and insecurity can reinforce the original perception of threat.

China’s “great rejuvenation” refers to its long-term national development project. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” represents an American political project centred on national renewal.

The two objectives can conflict in particular sectors, especially where trade, technology, investment or strategic security are concerned. But the existence of competition does not logically mean that every Chinese gain is an American loss.

When Trump visited Beijing in May 2026, Xi told him that “both China and the United States stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation.” He also said the two countries should be “partners rather than rivals.” This is the concept of positive-sum relations applied to great-power politics.

In 2013, Xi and Obama spoke of building a “new model of major-country relations.” Its stated components were “no conflict or confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation.” In 2023, Xi again rejected the inevitability of the Thucydides Trap, saying that “Planet Earth is vast enough to accommodate the respective development and common prosperity of China and the United States.”

In May 2026, during Trump’s visit to Beijing, Xi put the question more starkly. “Can China and the United States overcome the Thucydides Trap and create a new paradigm of major-country relations?” he asked. “Can we meet global challenges together and provide greater stability for the world?” The language has now moved from avoiding conflict to constructing what China describes as “constructive strategic stability.”

Following the May summit, the two leaders agreed to build such a relationship. Xi’s September speech said the framework should feature “cooperation as the mainstay, moderate competition, manageable differences, and promises of peace.” The theory of parallel national rejuvenation does not rest on the assumption that China and the United States have identical interests.

The breakthrough of the 1970s did not occur because disagreements disappeared. It occurred because leaders decided that the costs of permanent hostility were greater than the benefits of continued isolation. The 1979 joint communiqué stated that neither country should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific or elsewhere and that both sides wanted to reduce the danger of international military conflict.

These were not merely diplomatic phrases. They represented an attempt to establish rules for coexistence between two states with different political systems and different strategic interests. Xi’s arrival in Washington on Wednesday brings the historical experiment into a new phase.

The visit, running from Sept. 23 to 25, is taking place only months after Trump’s visit to Beijing. Chinese officials have described the reciprocal visits within six months as having “historic, milestone significance.”

Xi said that he was confident China and the United States could “find the right way to get along in the new era.” He said the two sides should work in the same direction and maintain a stable relationship in which cooperation remains the mainstay, competition is moderate and differences are manageable.

(The Writer is the Diplomatic Correspondent of The New Nation)