Original Author: Da Wei
Da Wei, a professor at Tsinghua University, argues the Xi-Biden summit in November 2023 revealed U.S.-China relations have entered a “new normal” characterized by four features: mutual acceptance that tension will continue indefinitely, mutual assessment that full-blown conflict would be unacceptable, mutual understanding that neither country will fulfill its strategic goals completely, and mutual observation that economic and social resilience is possible amidst intense bilateral competition.
One of China’s most well-known scholars of American studies, Da Wei, argues that the United States and China need to reach a new strategic understanding about Taiwan in order to avoid a larger crisis. However, he suggests that this has become more difficult “because some of the long-term fundamentals underlying the Taiwan issue have changed,” including the deterioration in U.S.-China relations, the narrowing power gap between the United States and China, and the growing power gap across the Taiwan Strait.
A comparative analysis of the U.S. strategy for the Asia Pacific region during the Obama and Trump administrations by China’s leading international relations scholars.