managed, has the potential to develop into full-blown conflicts.
CONCLUSION
The 2016 presidential election was the first US election to take place after Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012. Drastic changes have since taken place in China, in the United States, and the world at large. With China’s rapid rise as a global power, Chinese perceptions of the United States have undergone important changes as the United States is increasingly perceived by the Chinese as a great power in decline, both in terms of its hard and soft power. China watched closely as the ugliest forces of American politics nearly tore the nation apart. The 2016 presidential election seemed to confirm China’s perception that the United States is losing its battles both at home and abroad. Meanwhile, as China’s negative views of the United States came to a head in 2016, Chinese perceptions of the United States have experienced considerable changes. As the notion of the Chinese Dream became the dominant narrative of China’s political discourse, it seems increasingly likely that the political differences between the two nations will become more pronounced in the future, and the competition between China and the United States in terms of their respective models of development will become more intense. A safe prediction would be that as China’s distrust and disdain of American politics continues to grow, China will become more assertive in its reactions to American influence. It must be pointed out that this is not to predict that conflict between China and the United States is unavoidable. At least for China’s part, it is not yet capable of directly challenging the United States, as much as it still supports the current international norms with words and actions, despite the changes in China-US power distribution.
Meanwhile, no American president has ever walked into the White House with less political and policy experience than Donald Trump, and more than anybody in history, Trump has challenged the basic assumptions of China-US relations that proved true for the past forty years. While Trump prides himself on being unpredictable, strategic ambiguity, either by design or by accident, will only exacerbate mutual strategic distrust and instigate instability in the relationship. Therefore, China faces the challenges of guarding against volatile changes in China-US relations stirred up by a highly unpredictable and provocative American president. It also faces the challenge of managing its expectations for the prospects of China-US relations during the remainder of the Trump presidency. Although Trump’s presidency adds much instability and uncertainty to America’s policy in regard to China, there is still hope that the relationship will make progress under his watch. As America’s primary agenda-setter in foreign policy, President Trump has a great deal of influence over this process.
As China and the United States remain conscious of each other’s power and suspicious of each other’s intentions, the relationship is more likely to witness further deterioration until both sides come to the realization, as they did many times in history, that they have to reach a new “deal” or “framework” of mutual accommodation before things went out of hand. After all, the success of China’s national rejuvenation, as well as the fulfillment of Trump’s campaign promises, demands closer cooperation and less confrontation, whether willingly or grudgingly, from the two largest stakeholders in a chaotic world. Therefore, both countries need to focus more on long-term opportunities rather than short-term difficulties, while adjusting their perceptions of each other and redefining their roles on the global stage. Perhaps one way to escape the Thucydides’s trap, according to Graham Allison, the man who popularized the concept, is for leaders of both nations to have “a surge of strategic imagination as far beyond the current conventional wisdom in DC and Beijing as the remarkable Cold War strategy crafted by statesmen we now celebrate as the ‘wise men’ was beyond the consensus in Washington at the end of World War II.”77 Before that happens, the future of the Sinoamerican relationship remains deeply uncertain, for better or worse.
NOTES
The author wishes to thank Xie Tao of Beijing Foreign Studies University, Diao Daming of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Suisheng Zhao of the University of Denver, for reviewing the chapter and offering helpful suggestions. The author acknowledges financial support from the Young Faculty Research Fund of Beijing Foreign Studies University (2015JT003). All Chinese texts and sources quoted herein were translated into English by the author.
1. Sina.cn, China’s leading online media, used Game of Thrones as the umbrella term for its election coverage, http://news.sina.cn/news_zt/2016-election?vt=4&sid=186663, accessed November 9, 2016.
2. For example, a search using “Trump” as the keyword on zhihu.com, China’s version of quora.com, returns 7770 question items, 999 of which are marked as recommended, that is, with detailed answers, and a total of 45000 regular followers. In comparison, “Clinton” shows 3010 questions, 1000 recommends, and 8949 followers, and “President Obama” has 900 questions, 424 recommends, and 2694 followers. While there must be some amount of overlap in the search results, there are 8182 questions, 999 recommends, and 22000 followers under the subject of the “2016 U.S. presidential election,” in contrast to only 120 questions, 57 recommends, and 121 followers for the “2012 U.S. presidential election.” All searches were done in Chinese. Accessed December 28, 2016.
3. The Chinese media were quick to seize upon their audience’s demand for information about the 2016 US election, just as they were enthusiastic themselves about reporting on this epic event. The public’s interest and the media’s frenzy combined to produce an enormous number of TV programs, debates, lectures, news reports, and commentaries that focused on the election. In terms of scholarly interest, a simple search using “the U.S. presidential election” as the keyword on cnki.net, China’s most robust digital library of academic journals produces 5878 published articles in 2016 and 7310 articles in 2015. All searches were done in Chinese. Accessed December 28, 2016.
4. In a regular press conference held by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in February 2016, the Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying was asked whether China was concerned about the prospects of Donald Trump becoming the Republican presidential candidate and eventually the US president, as he had delivered his share of anti-China rhetoric on the campaign trail. Hua responded by saying, “Just like anybody else, we are watching the ongoing presidential election in the United States with great interest. Since it is America’s own domestic politics, I will refrain from making any comments on the candidate’s rhetoric that has just been mentioned.” http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/web/fyrbt_673021/jzhsl_673025/t1342853.shtml, accessed December 28, 2016.
5. See, for example, Eduardo Porter, “A Trade War Against China Might Be a Fight Trump Couldn’t Win,” New York Times, November 22, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/business/a-trade-war-against-china-might-be-a-fight-trump-couldnt-win.html?_r=0 and “Will Trump Start a Trade War against China?,” Global Times, November 13, 2016, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1017696.shtml.
6. It is well known that the fundamental goals of Chinese foreign policy in the postMao era are to preserve China’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, and to create
