China, the United States, Alliances, and War: Avoiding the Thucydides Trap?

Abstract: Chinese President Xi Jinping emphatically rejects the so-called Thucydides Trap and its analogy that a rising China is destined for war with the United States, the status quo great power. But there is a contradiction between Beijing's peaceable rhetoric about a “New Type of Major Power Relations” with the US, and Beijing's disregard for the US and its allies. concerns about rising Chinese assertiveness in the East and South China Seas. It is not inconceivable that smaller Chinese and American allies in East Asia might well drag the US and China into a conflict rather than a conflict directly caused by the “power transition” between the two great powers per se.