Asian Affairs: An American Review

ISSN: 0092-7678 (Print) 1940-1590 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vasa20

China, the United States, Alliances, and War:

Avoiding the Thucydides Trap?

Lam Peng Er

To cite this article: Lam Peng Er (2016) China, the United States, Alliances, and War:
Avoiding the Thucydides Trap?, Asian Affairs: An American Review, 43:2, 36-46, DOI:
10.1080/00927678.2016.1150765

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00927678.2016.1150765

Published online: 28 Apr 2016.

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 Asian Affairs: An American Review, 43:36–46, 2016
Copyright C 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0092-7678 print / 1940-1590 online
DOI: 10.1080/00927678.2016.1150765

China, the United States, Alliances, and

War: Avoiding the Thucydides Trap?
Downloaded by [Australian National University] at 02:57 30 May 2016

LAM PENG ER

Abstract: Chinese President Xi Jinping emphatically rejects the so-called Thucy-

dides 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.

Keywords: Graham Allison, “New Type of Major Power Relations”, “One Belt,
One Road”, President Xi Jinping, power transition, Thucydides Trap

In September 2015 in Seattle, President Xi Jinping categorically rejected

the fatalistic prediction that China and the United States are destined for war.1
Arguably, the United States and China are economic “Siamese twins joined at
the hips” in a globalized world; a war between two largest economies and two
great powers with nuclear arsenals could evoke a third world war. Xi affirmed,
“There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides trap in the world. But should
major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they
might create such traps for themselves.”2 The purchase of 300 Boeing planes by

Address correspondence to Dr. Lam Peng Er, Senior Research Fellow, East Asian Institute,
National University of Singapore, 469A Bukit Timah Road Tower Block #06-01 Singapore
259770. Email: eailampe@nus.edu.sg
36
 China, the United States, Alliances, and War 37

China when Xi was in Seattle was a hint to the United States about economic
interdependency.
That the Chinese president flagged the Thucydides Trap (TT) as a matter of
great concern during his state visit to the United States was because the idea of a
TT seemed to have gained traction among certain American strategists, academics,
and journalists.3 While any rational statesman would assume that war between the
United States and China is unjustifiable and utterly reckless in the nuclear age,
the contrarian belief that war is probable if not inevitable may make the TT a
self-fulfilling prophesy. Whether Xi had nipped the TT in the bud in Seattle
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remains to be seen.
This article first examines the discourse of the TT and its advent in the United
States. Following that is an analysis of China’s responses to the TT and attempts to
diffuse this discourse. The article then assesses the lukewarm American response
to Chinese overtures to avoid the TT. The next section is a survey of Japan and
the Philippines, two American allies, who had their “Thucydides Moment” when
Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and Filipino President Benigno Aquino
commented on China’s rise and the power transition in East Asia, fearing that
conflict may happen. The last section concludes that, although a TT between
China and the United States is not inevitable, it is not inconceivable that a “game
of chicken” in the disputed East and South China Seas between Beijing and
Washington’s allies may lead to an accidental conflict. If crisis management cannot
nip this in the bud, then there is a danger that U.S. forces may be sucked into the
vortex, leading to a conflict escalation.
There are two central arguments in this article. First, although Chinese President
Xi Jinping has proposed a “New Type of Major Power Relations” based on a
peaceful positive-sum game of mutual benefit and respect rather than the zero-
sum game of traditional great power rivalry and war, the U.S. superpower appears
skeptical of Xi’s proposal and unwilling to grant parity status to China. While
China offers an olive branch to the United States, it is assertive toward Japan in
the East China Sea, especially in the vicinity of the disputed Senkaku (Diaoyu)
islands and the claimant states in the contested South China Sea. There is therefore
a contradiction between Beijing’s peaceable rhetoric and tough behavior in various
maritime disputes with its neighbors.
Second, the danger of the TT is also between China and U.S. allies of Japan, the
Philippines and Taiwan (quasi-ally), which may entangle the United States into a
collision course with China. It remains unknown whether actions by China’s ally
in the Korean peninsula and American allies in the Taiwan Strait, East China Sea,
and the South China Sea will unleash a chain of events that drags the great powers
into a war just like the allies of Sparta and Athens two and a half millennia ago.
 38 Asian Affairs: An American Review

Thucydides Trap: Origins

Although Harvard Professor Graham Allison was the one who coined TT in
20124 (and had been flogging and popularizing it ever since), the concept is almost
2,500 years old. Ancient Greek historian Thucydides elegantly, powerfully, and
succinctly stated that what “made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian
power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.” The disturbing analogy in the
21st century is that what makes war inevitable is the growth of Chinese power and
the fear which this caused in the United States.
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In the post-World War II era, some international relations theorists and histori-
ans have postulated that during a power transition, a rising power will pose a great
challenge to the then-prevailing status quo power, leading to war.5 Graham Allison
has carried on this “offensive realist” tradition in Western international relations
thinking. Besides writing op-ed pieces in major newspapers and monthly maga-
zines like the Atlantic, Allison went to China, including to Tsinghua University,
to propagate his views and succeeded in attracting considerable attention among
certain Chinese intelligentsia and media.6
Allison is the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
at Harvard University. The Belfer Center analyzed 16 “Thucydides case studies”
of “rising and status quo/ declining great powers” in the last 500 years. Allison
noted that war broke out in 12 cases—a disconcerting 75% probability of a clash
of arms when there was a great power transition. He declared, “The preeminent
geostrategic challenge of this era is not violent Islamic extremists or a resurgent
Russia. It is the impact that China’s ascendance will have on the US-led interna-
tional order . . .”7 Moreover, Allison argued that President Xi Jinping, a strongman
leading a formidable country enjoying rapid economic growth, has adopted a more
assertive and nationalistic foreign policy.8 He implied that this may well put China
at odds with the United States.
Although Allison claimed that war was not inevitable,9 he also offered the
analogy of Kaiser’s Germany challenging Great Britain and opined that it was
the rising capability of Imperial Germany (a structural and objective factor) and
not the German upstart’s intention of aggrandizement and a disdain for Great
Britain (subjective factor) that drove them to war. Simply put, capabilities shape
the intentions of nations toward their rivals and Chinese capabilities, underpinned
by the country’s phenomenal economic growth, are rising.
If the TT gradually becomes the mainstream thinking in the U.S. foreign policy
establishment, then it will mean that a rising China will be viewed with increasing
suspicion if not alarm by the United States regardless of Chinese good intentions
and desire for an olive branch. In particular, when Chinese intentions are unclear
and open to conflicting interpretations, there is always the danger that the United
States will focus on rising Chinese capabilities despite Beijing’s ostensible quest
to avoid the TT.
 China, the United States, Alliances, and War 39

Zbigniew Brzezinski said: “I find what President Xi says to be very admirable.

I’m impressed particularly by the historical reference to Thucydides, who wrote
about the conflict between Sparta and Athens.. . .. Ominously, I think there is a real
danger that, despite such good intentions, even the American-Chinese relationship
may deteriorate unless both sides make a greater effort than so far to consolidate
more deeply the strategic relationship” (italics added).10
While Allison has identified the TT as a security dilemma that will haunt
China–U.S. relations, the erudite professor has no solution to avoid the TT other
than a facile call for the two rivals to change their attitudes toward each other: “The
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rise of a 5,000-year-old civilization with 1.3 billion people is not a problem to be

fixed. It is a condition—a chronic condition that will have to be managed over a
generation. Success will require not just a new slogan, more frequent summits of
presidents, and additional meetings of departmental working groups. Managing
this relationship without war will demand sustained attention, week by week, at
the highest level in both countries. . . . Most significantly, it will mean more radical
changes in attitudes and actions, by leaders and publics alike, than anyone has yet
imagined.”11

China’s Grand Strategy to Avoid the Thucydides Trap

To avoid the TT, President Xi has proposed a “New Type of Major Power
Relations” (NTMPR).12 According to the Chinese, this is a fundamentally different
concept based on a peaceful win-win approach (positive-sum game) rather than
the zero-sum game of great power rivalry and war. The essence of this concept is
for China to seek common ground with the U.S. superpower for mutual benefits
and to respect each other’s core interests.
Xi first articulated the NTMPR concept when he visited the United States in
February 2012.13 This concept is also consonant with his predecessor Hu Jintao’s
declaratory foreign policy that China seeks a “harmonious world” and a “peaceful
rise” or “peaceful development.”
Some Chinese analysts even argued that their country’s civilization, history,
and strategic culture have been deeply influenced by Confucianism, which stresses
virtue, benevolence, and non-expansionism abroad.14 This is also evidenced by
China’s lack of military alliances and military bases overseas.
Xi demonstrated his NTMPR approach by seeking cooperation with the United
States to address various issues like Iran’s nuclearization, climate change, and
cyber-security. Unlike the former Soviet Union, Beijing is avoiding an arms race
with the United States or overreacting to the American military “rebalancing”
or “pivot” back to East Asia. Instead, Xi’s foreign policy grand strategy is the
developmental “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) proposal to link China with Europe
via an overland Economic Belt and a Maritime Silk Road. That this OBOR
idea does not extend to the Pacific may be interpreted as a subtle hint by Xi to
Washington that Beijing is concentrating on Central Asia and the maritime coasts
 40 Asian Affairs: An American Review

of East Asia to East Africa and is therefore not a challenger to U.S. dominance in
the Pacific. Simply put, the OBOR is one scheme to avoid the TT.
The Chinese media also spelled out 10 reasons why China and the United States
can avoid the TT.15 The first is that “this is a world where peace, development,
cooperation and mutual benefit have become the trend of the times” (Li Zhihui,
“Ten reasons China, US can avoid Thucydides Trap”). This may sound like plati-
tude and naivety, but New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker has written
a powerful book arguing that “violence has been diminishing for a millennia and
we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence.”16
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The second reason is that the United States and China would learn from history
to avoid war. Third is the “China road,” which does not seek alliances or expansion.
The article noted: “There is no cause for fear as China has neither the interest,
nor the need to challenge the United States for leadership by launching a war” (Li
Zhihui, “Ten reasons China, US can avoid Thucydides Trap”).17
The fourth and fifth reasons argue that both countries are important members of
the Asia-Pacific region and enjoy economic interdependence, especially an annual
trade of US$555 billion. The same article argued, “The Pacific provides enough
room for both sides to develop. It is the first time in history that an existing power
and a rising power have so many shared interests” (Li Zhihui, “Ten reasons China,
US can avoid Thucydides Trap”).18
The sixth reason, as noted by Li Zhihui, in the article “Ten reasons China,
US can avoid Thucydides Trap,” is that both countries can cooperate in global
governance, host frequent leaders’ interaction to understand each other’s strategic
intention (seventh reason), engage in people-to-people exchange (eighth reason),
“difference management” through over 90 intergovernmental dialogue and coop-
eration mechanisms (ninth reason), and embrace “mutual respect” (10th reason).
The article ended on a sanguine note: “If Thucydides trap is replaced with a new
model of major-country relationship, China and the United States will have made
a great contribution to the world’s future.”19

United States: Lukewarm Response to Xi’s “New Type of Major Power

Relations”
U.S. response reflects its incongruence with Xi’s NTMPR concept. President
Barrack Obama did not adopt or embrace this concept in any of his speeches.20
The framework of a US-China G2 to maintain global governance and order is not
well received in Washington DC. Indeed, the United States appears skeptical if
not cynical of the NTMPR and is apparently not willing to grant parity status to
China. While some Chinese analysts subscribe to the belief that “China is rising
while the United States is declining,” many Americans do not necessarily think
so and are optimistic that their country can rebound. History seems to attest to
this, as the United States recovered from its defeat in the Vietnam War, won the
Cold War, spearheaded the information technology revolution that transformed
 China, the United States, Alliances, and War 41

the world, is an open society that attracts global talent, and has by far the most
powerful military in the world and loyal allies in Europe and East Asia.
On U.S. cynicism toward the NTMPR, Cheng Li and Lucy Xu wrote, “Rec-
ognizing the historically recurring clashes between an existing great power and
an emerging power, China looks to the ‘New Type’ framework to avoid historical
determinism and to seek a less-disruptive rise in an increasingly integrated world.”
They continued, “At the same time, China wants to be viewed as an equal. By
using the term ‘Great Power’ to primarily, if not solely, refer to China and the
United States, China aims to elevate itself to a level playing field. Obtaining U.S.
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support of the concept would imply Uncle Sam’s recognition of China’s strength
and power.”21
The two authors concluded, “Across the Pacific, Americans view this Chinese
concept with suspicion and cynicism. The United States is particularly sensitive to
how its adoption of the concept would be portrayed by allies in the region. Tradi-
tionally, American policy makers have no interest in embracing a new geopolitical
framework offered by another country. There are unspoken concerns that Ameri-
can recognition of the Chinese concept would . . . suggest that the United States
recognizes itself as the declining established power in a ‘Thucydides trap’ with
rising China” (italics added).22
Another analyst noted that the United States is not prepared to yield to Chinese
territorial claims in the East and South Chinese Seas for the sake of a NTMPR:
“[China’s] willingness to use force was palpable in the kind of territorial disputes
now roiling East and Southeast Asia. Nowhere in official Chinese elaboration of
this ‘New Type of Great Power Relations’ or the accompanying ‘New Type of
International Relations’ is any discussion of what compromises Beijing might
need to make or even a basic recognition that US interests also are at stake in the
western Pacific.”23
Another commentator suggested a compromise between the two great powers
to avoid the TT: “Avoiding a clash will take compromise from both America and
China, and a willingness to reconsider their security horizons and renegotiate
their universe.”24 Similarly, Australian scholar Hugh White has advocated that the
United States accommodate the rise of China to avoid a clash.25 However, Ameri-
can allies like Japan and the Philippines are afraid that any American compromises
or appeasement may result in a future “Chinese sphere of influence” taking root
in East Asia.
Based on the TT analogy, it was the smaller allies of Athens and Sparta that
sucked the two great powers into the Peloponnesian War. Similarly, it was the
minor allies (Serbia and Austro-Hungary) that sucked the great powers (Russia,
Germany, France and Britain) into World War 1, giving rise to “the tail wagging
the dog” in both cases. The danger of the TT is, therefore, not necessarily restricted
to that between the United States and China but also between China and the U.S.
allies of Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan (quasi-ally), which may entangle the
 42 Asian Affairs: An American Review

U.S. superpower into a collision course with China. The United States apparently
cannot abandon its allies without losing its superpower credibility.

Thucydides Trap between China and Japan and Thucydides Trap between
China and the Philippines

In January 2014 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Japanese

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo told reporters that Japan and China are in a “similar
situation” as Britain and Germany before the outbreak of war in 1914. The Japanese
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media quoted Abe: “What I would call a military encounter between Japan and
China would deal great damage to both countries. . . . For China, economic growth
is an absolute requisite for the Communist Party to govern China, to keep China
under control. I believe it is well understood that a military clash with Japan would
wipe that requisite away.”26
Abe continued, “But I believe the important thing is to make sure that no
accidental military encounter would take place despite that understanding. This
year marks the centenary of World War I. Britain and Germany were highly
(inter)dependent economically. They were the largest trade partners (to each other),
but the war did break out.”27
Not surprisingly, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi condemned Abe’s “Thucy-
dides Moment” that war may break out between the neighbors. Wang Yi retorted,
“Abe’s remarks struck me as total disorder of time and space, making no sense
at all. What I mean by total confusion of time and space is that the world has
changed dramatically since 1914. China is a force for peace. . . . If Japan wants
to talk about history, then let’s talk about history. Let’s all have a good look at
what Japan actually did in modern history.”28 Wang Yi was of course referring to
Imperial Japan’s brutal invasion of the Chinese Mainland and implicitly criticizing
Abe for a lack of contrition over the past.
While most Chinese leaders and analysts are likely to dismiss Abe as a right-
wing politician and a historical revisionist, there is the mood in Japan that a rising
China is behaving arrogantly, like a regional bully, and is prepared to use force
to change the status quo in the East and South China Seas. Japan had been the
number one Asian military power since 1895, after defeating the Qing navy, and
despite losing the Pacific War in 1945, it became the world’s economic superpower
by 1968. Indeed, Japan succeeded in its “peaceful rise” after embracing pacifism
in the post-World War II era.
However, China superseded the Japanese gross domestic product in 2010. Into
the “third lost decade” since the Japanese “bubble economy” burst in 1991, many
Japanese elites and opinion shapers are wary of Beijing and are mindful of the
main structural shift in East Asia—the rise of China coupled by the relative decline
of Japan. Unlike the TT between the United States and China, the TT between
China and Japan is probably worse given the intractable problems of territorial
 China, the United States, Alliances, and War 43

disputes over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands and a clash of historical narratives
over Imperial Japan’s devastating invasion of China between 1937 and 1945.
While icy relations between Beijing and Tokyo may thaw a little, and bilateral
summits between their top political leaders may eventually resume in each other’s
capital, profound mistrust between the two neighbors remains. It is not inconceiv-
able that if the future top Japanese political leadership were to be convinced that
the United States is an unreliable ally with its hesitation to extend its nuclear um-
brella to Japan, Tokyo will seriously consider developing its own nuclear option,
and East Asia will become a major flashpoint in world politics.
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The Philippines and Malaysia, two claimant states in the disputed South China
Sea, also had their “Thucydides Moment.” President Benigno Aquino saw a differ-
ent Thucydides Trap and compared China with Hitler’s Germany: a rising power
intimidating smaller states while the status quo power folded its arms. Accord-
ing to this analogy, the Philippines has the role of Czechoslovakia threatened by
Germany. The United States would have behaved badly like Britain and France
(by appeasing Germany) at the prelude of World War II if it were to abandon its
Filipino ally.29
In October 2015, the United States showed the flag and its resolve by sending
a naval destroyer within 12 nautical miles of Beijing’s artificial islands from land
reclamation in the South China Sea, to Chinese consternation. U.S. navy said that
it will send more warships close to the Chinese artificial islands.30 This can be
interpreted as a signal to not only Beijing but also American allies in East Asia
that the United States has the will and capability to maintain the U.S.-led regional
order despite a rising China. This event also reveals that the United States does
not subscribe to Xi’s concept of a NTMPR.
At the 2014 Asia-Pacific Roundtable, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak,
in a subtle dig at China, said: “Imagine a world where institutions, rules and norms
are ignored, forgotten or cast aside; in which countries with large economies and
strong armies dominate, forcing the rest to accept the outcome. This would be a
world where, in the words of the Greek historian Thucydides, ‘The strong do what
they can and the weak suffer what they must.”’31

Whither the Thucydides Trap in East Asia?

That the intelligentsia in the United States and China openly ponder and hold
a conversation on the TT shows cognizance of its risks. David Lai observed,
“This was probably the first time in the history of international relations that
a rising power openly addressed the key issues in a power transition with the
dominating nation in this system and pledged to avoid the mistakes that led past
great powers to use force against each other to settle their differences over the
emerging international order.”32
Logically speaking, the United States and China should and must avoid the
TT, given their economic interdependency and the fact that they are both nuclear
 44 Asian Affairs: An American Review

powers with a second-strike capability. Indeed, both nuclear powers have a MAD
(mutual assured destruction) relationship, and nuclear deterrence may well be
sufficient to keep the general peace. China also differs from the former Soviet
Union in its avoidance of a Cold War-like confrontation with the United States,
staying clear of being an ideological rival, or engaging in an arms race and
promoting proxy wars in the third world. Contrary to some paranoia in China,
the United States is believed not to be seeking to contain China, as succinctly put
forward by then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who reflected on U.S.
economic interdependency with China by rhetorically asking, “How do you deal
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toughly with your banker?”33

Besides economic interdependency and various confidence-building mecha-
nisms, both countries have sought to strengthen their people-to-people relation-
ship. Xi, at his talks with Obama in Washington, DC, in September 2015, said that
“the Chinese side will subsidize 50,000 students from both sides to study in the
other country in the coming three years, and welcomes the U.S. to expand the 100
Thousand Strong Foundation from universities to primary and middle schools,
so as to achieve the goal of one million American students learning Chinese by
2020.”34
Presently, there are an estimated 200,000 Americans studying the Chinese
language.35 If an increasing number of American and Chinese youths can
speak each other’s languages, they may well enjoy better cross-cultural under-
standing. However, there are at least four conceivable scenarios for China, the
United States, and its allies to fall through the Thucydides Trap door. First,
as rightly pointed out by President Xi, countries can make strategic miscalcu-
lations. Indeed, any serious student of history will note that political leaders
were often guilty of hubris, folly, blunders, and stupidity in war and peace.
There are no assurances that future leaders will always behave wisely and
modestly.
Second, while the United States still maintains a huge military gap between
itself and China,36 there is still this question of how both powers would behave
when the latter reaches comprehensive parity with the United States within a few
decades. Third, there is a danger that China may exaggerate the “relative decline”
of the United States while the United States may exaggerate the “China threat”
or China as a challenger to the U.S.-led global order. Such distorted perceptions
will accentuate the TT. Few Mainland Chinese elites seem to think a stronger-
than-anticipated rebound of the United States is possible, given their narrative of
a rising and unstoppable China.
The fourth scenario is imponderable and is perhaps the most dangerous one,
with the United States and China being dragged into war by actions of their smaller
allies in the Korean peninsula, Taiwan Strait, East China Sea, and the South China
Sea, just like the weaker allies of Sparta and Athens two and a half millennium
ago. It is not inconceivable that an accidental collision of planes or ships “playing
chicken” in the East and South China Seas might well lead to an escalation of
 China, the United States, Alliances, and War 45

tension and conflict, which will place tremendous stress on crisis management
between the United States and China.

NOTES

1. “Avoiding usual traps and building China-US trust,” China Daily, August 22, 2015. See also
“Collision course? Rise of China a Stress for the US,” BBC News, September 26, 2015.
2. “Xi offers ways to build new model of major-country relationship with US”, Xinhua, September
23, 2015.
3. There are also American scholars who reject the TT. See, for example, “China and US can avoid
Thucydides’ Trap: Joseph Nye,” People’s Daily Online, September 17, 2015, and Robert B. Zoellick,
Downloaded by [Australian National University] at 02:57 30 May 2016

“US, China and Thucydides,” The National Interest, July–August 2013. For a cogent argument against
the TT by a Canadian scholar, see David Welch, “Can the United States and China avoid a Thucydides
Trap?” E-International Relations, April 6, 2015.
4. See Graham T. Allison, “Avoiding Thucydides’ Trap,” Financial Times, August 22, 2012.
5. See, for example, A. F. K. Organski, World Politics, 2nd ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1969); Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981); Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of The Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict
from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1988) and John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great
Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001).
6. See Graham T. Allison, “Destined for War: Can the US and China Escape Thucydides’ Trap?”
(CIDEG No. 118 Academic Salon, School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University,
March 16, 2015). See also Graham T. Allison, “Obama and Xi must think broadly to avoid a classic
trap,” New York Times, June 6, 2013.
7. Graham T. Allison, “The Thucydides Trap: Are the US and China headed for war?” The Atlantic,
September 24, 2015; and Graham T. Allison, “Just how likely is another World War? Assessing the
similarities and differences between 1914 and 2014,” The Atlantic, July 30, 2014.
8. Graham T. Allison wrote, “When Deng Xiaoping initiated China’s fast march to the market
in 1978, he announced a policy known as ‘hide and bide.’ What China needed most abroad was
stability and access to markets. The Chinese would thus ‘bide our time and hide our capabilities,’
which Chinese military officers sometimes paraphrased as getting strong before getting even. With the
arrival of China’s new paramount leader, Xi Jinping, the era of ‘hide and bide’ is over. . . . Overseas,
he has pursued a more active Chinese foreign policy that is increasingly assertive in advancing the
country’s interests.” See Allison, “The Thucydides Trap.”
9. Indeed, Allison wrote in the same article: “War between the U.S. and China is more likely
than recognized at the moment. Indeed, judging by the historical record, war is more likely than not”;
Allison, “The Thucydides Trap.”
10. Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Can China Avoid the Thucydides Trap,” New Perspectives Quarterly
31, no. 2 (April 2014).
11. Allison, “The Thucydides Trap.”
12. The Chinese media noted, “A “new type of great power relations” means avoiding conflict,
confrontation, and treating each other with mutual respect, and cooperation toward win-win results.
The purpose of the concept is peaceful coexistence and common development between China, a fast
rising power in the world, and the United States, a ruling power.” See “New type of great power
relations,” CCTV, September 20, 2015.
For articles that echo Xi’s NTMPR, see Wu Jianmin, “Cooperation on non-proliferation builds new US-
China ‘Big Countries Relationship,”’ China and US Focus, April 17, 2015; Fu Ying, “Exploring a way
forward for China-US Relations,” China and US Focus, June 10, 2015; Zhou Wenzhong, “Thinking
beyond Conflict,” China and US Focus, June 1, 2015; He Yefei, China and US Focus, September 1,
2015; and Qu Xing, “China-US: duel of the century or partner of the century,” April 15, 2015, Chinese
Embassy in Belgium, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, People’s Republic of China.
See also Lyle J. Goldstein, “China wonders if it can avoid the Thucydides Trap,” The National Interest,
March 3, 2015.
13. See David M. Lampton, “A new type of major-power relationship: Seeking a Durable foundation
for US-China ties,” Asia Policy no.16 (July 2013).
 46 Asian Affairs: An American Review

14. David Lai wrote, “Chinese analysts argued that power transition was a problem based on
Western experience. They insisted that China had been a Confucian society for over 2,000 years;
Chinese followed Confucius’s teaching to pursue harmony; they had never been aggressive; and they
fought only in response to invasions.” See David Lai, The United States and China in Power Transition
(Carlisle Barracks, PA: US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 2011), 58.
In a meeting with the delegates of the Berggruen Institute, Xi Jinping said, “The argument that strong
countries are bound to seek hegemony does not apply to China. This is not in the DNA of this country
given our long historical and cultural background. Also China fully understands that we need a peaceful
and stable internal and external environment to develop ourselves. We all need to work together to
avoid the Thucydides trap—destructive tensions between an emerging power and established powers,
or between established powers themselves.” Cited from Graeme Dobell, “The Ghost of Thucydides:
Is War in Asia Inevitable?” The National Interest, June 24, 2015.
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15. “Ten reasons China, US can avoid Thucydides Trap,” Xinhua, September 27, 2015.
16. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York:
Viking, 2011).
17. Li Zhihui, “Ten reasons China, US can avoid Thucydides Trap.”
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. U.S. media noted the Obama administration’s reluctance to embrace Xi’s NTMPR concept:
“But if there is no doubt the phrase enjoys Mr. Xi’s personal imprimatur, it has also clearly fallen out
of favor with Mr. Obama and his aides. . . . Some critics say Mr. Xi’s phrase is essentially code for
establishing a Chinese sphere of influence in Asia, with the United States agreeing to quietly retreat
from the region to minimize conflict. . . . As Mr. Obama backs away from Mr. Xi’s preferred formula
for reshaping American-China relations, his challenge may be deciding where and how to establish
limits on China’s ambitions—and where the United States might welcome or at least tolerate a larger
Chinese role.” See “China’s ‘new type’ of ties fails to sway Obama,” Jane Perlez, New York Times,
November 9, 2014.
21. Chen Li and Lucy Xu, “Chinese enthusiasm and American cynicism over the ‘new type of
great power relations,”’ China-US Focus, December 4, 2014.
22. Ibid.
23. Peter Mattis, “Nothing new about China’s new concept,” The National Interest, June 7, 2013.
24. Pat Porter, “Thucydides Trap 2.0: Superpower suicide?” The National Interest, May 2, 2014.
For a cynical Russian view that the United States will not yield its hegemony by compromising with
China, see “Thucydides’ Trap: US unwilling to strike a compromise with China.” Sputnik International,
Sputnik News, July 29, 2015.
25. Hugh White, “The U.S. must accommodate China’s power in the island dispute—or be willing
to pay a high price,” World Post, October 27, 2015.
26. “Abe compares Japan-China tension to Britain, Germany before World War I”, Asahi Shimbun,
January 24, 2014.
27. Ibid.
28. See “Transcript of interview with Wang Yi,” Financial Times, January 29, 2014.
29. Editor, “ASEAN leaders in Thucydides trap before a great moment,” Asia Times, June 25,
2015.
30. “US set to sail again near to islets claimed by China,” Channel News Asia, October 28, 2015.
31. Australian Strategic Policy Institute, “Athens and Sparta come to the South China Sea,” The
Strategist, June 4, 2014.
32. See Lai, The United States and China in Power Transition, 75.
33. “US embassy cables: Hillary Clinton ponders US relationship with its Chinese ‘banker,”’ The
Guardian, March 28, 2009.
34. “Xi Jinping Holds Talks with President Barack Obama of the US,” Embassy of the People’s
Republic of China in Republic of Singapore, September 26, 2015.
35. “Obama’s learn Chinese drive on road to reality,” The Straits Times, October 26, 2015.
36. In 2015, the United States has a declared military budget of US$601 billion, more than the
next seven highest spending countries added together. “Here’s how the US military spends its billions,”
Skye Gould, Business Insider, August 26, 2015.