Strategic Competition, Economic Diplomacy and Trade Warfare: Re-Conceptualizing the ‘Cold War’ in the Case of Recent US-China Trade War

Abstract

The present study proposes a method of analysis which contains the factor parts of re-conceptualizing of the Cold War within the aspects of economic, political, and technological interaction between the USA and China, which scholars denote as the ‘New Cold War’ and ‘Post-Cold War’, so that it will offer a source for further studies of the subject. This study outlines the ‘new cold war’ idea associated with problems of trade disputes between China and the USA that can be analyzed in each of the identified sub-cases. What this paper has endeavored is to define a method to establish a few extents of academic scholarship that would contribute to IR theories and to the literature to obtain new knowledge on the ‘New Cold War’ in the context of the recent China-USA Trade War. Our analysis pays more attention to American actions and China's reactions in the twenty-first century and more thoroughly covers the economic, political, security, trade, investment, and technological aspects. However, by employing the mainstream international relations theories, this paper attempted at describing how these fundamental forces shape the foreign policy in current and future external relations between and within the foreign policy-making process of China and the USA.