Reluctant Rivals I—China-US Relations under Trump, Practical Deals or More Challenges?

Generally recognized as the most consequential relationship of the twenty-first century, a range of concepts and models-from the Thucydides Trap to a new Cold War paradigm-have been used to analyze US-China relations in an attempt to predict how they will evolve in an age of new great power relations. None of these have been sufficient to encompass the complexities and nuances of the unique state of this relationship, which is so closely intertwined, yet fraught with so many conflicts, from the cultural and ideological to the economic and systemic, which have resulted in an increasing tension in the relationship.