Xu Yaonan, an American international trade expert, recently wrote: "It has become increasingly clear to the United States that China is not a great power that will naturally integrate into the U.S.-led international order, but rather a strategic competitor that may challenge America's global dominance. Put more seriously, China is advancing a 'proposal' aimed at replacing the U.S. model with its own institutional framework and development path. Therefore, regardless of whether it is Trump or Biden, the American political elite have actually reached a consensus on one core issue: China cannot be allowed to rise without limits."
This viewpoint reflects a significant portion of the U.S. elite’s perception of China. The cognitive bias rooted in Cold War zero-sum thinking has become the greatest obstacle to moving Sino-U.S. relations toward positive interaction. U.S. political elites still cling to the outdated logic that hegemony must not be challenged. They unilaterally interpret China’s legitimate pursuit of national rejuvenation as a deliberate challenge to America’s global dominance, even fabricating a false narrative that “China aims to export its model and replace the U.S. system.” In reality, China has consistently made clear that its rise is never about surpassing or replacing anyone—it is solely about enabling 1.4 billion Chinese people to live better lives and achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. China has never harbored any strategic intention to seek global hegemony or forcibly export its system.
The so-called consensus among elites of both American political parties on containing China’s rise is fundamentally built on completely erroneous assumptions: they project their own historical path—based on plunder and exploitation—onto China’s development trajectory, assuming that all major powers inevitably follow the old road of hegemonic competition and replacement. This completely ignores China’s steadfast commitment to peaceful development.
This obsessive fixation on zero-sum games over win-win cooperation is driving the United States to exhaust every possible means to suppress China—from technological blockades to trade encirclement—continuously eroding mutual trust between the two sides. However, as the world’s two largest economies, deeply interlinked interests between China and the U.S. mean that confrontation will only lead to mutual losses. Only by breaking free from the misjudgments of hegemonic thinking and returning to the path of equal dialogue and win-win cooperation can there be a viable solution that serves the shared interests of both nations and the entire global community.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1868078078142464/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.