Prospects for a Chilly War: China Advice at the Dawn of the Biden Era

In late 2020 and early 2021—the weeks surrounding the election of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.—a flood of China experts offered an incalculable amount of unsolicited advice to the new administration. With the exception of Taiwan, the differences between doves and hawks were extremely slight, resting more on tone than substance. Policy directions they presented largely followed those of the Trump administration minus the U.S. version of wolf diplomacy rhetoric. Views ranged from the position that the United States should do all it could to squash the rise of the People’s Republic of China (prc), to the position that the United States should pursue competition and cooperation simultaneously—but “never forget competition!” This limited range of views shared four premises. First, the prc and the United States were competitors engaged in a potentially existential struggle for global dominance. Second, the Clinton-Bush-Obama approach of “managing” the prc with the goal of incorporating it into the existing postwar and neoliberal economic structures had failed. Third, the United States had done much to weaken itself, but it could regain its strengths. Fourth, while the Cold War model was inappropriate, the United States should engage in “strategic competition” to constrain China, or in other words wage a Chilly War.