OpinionFor China and the US, a new Cold War or a not new Cold War?

The differences between the US and Chinese economic systems are not as stark as those that existed between the US and the Soviet Union

US-China strategic rivalry is unlikely to have as clear-cut an end as US-Soviet competition. It’s more plausible to imagine them stumbling into the future locked in an uneasy but indefinite embrace

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US President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping. Photo: AFP

Published: 2:30pm, 1 Jul 2020Updated: 2:38pm, 1 Jul 2020

In 1956, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev notoriously told Western ambassadors in Moscow: “We will bury you.” The statement was emblematic of the Cold War as an existential global struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union.

There seems to be a consensus that the US and China are now in or heading toward a “new Cold War”. The phase has become a trope to describe the relationship, and not just by the lazy or historically illiterate. No less a personage than Henry Kissinger warns that we are in the “foothills of a Cold War”. Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, accuses the US of pushing relations towards a “new Cold War”.

Something has clearly changed. From 1972, when they re-established contacts after more than two decades of hostility, to perhaps circa 2010, the overall trajectory of US-China relations was toward engagement, despite episodes of tension over Taiwan and other issues. Engagement has not ceased. However, the overall emphasis of the relationship is now on strategic competition and looks set to remain so for the foreseeable future.

Still, is the Cold War an accurate metaphor? The question may strike some as excessively punctilious. But inappropriate metaphors overused can become self-fulfilling. It is important to examine the metaphor carefully rather than use it carelessly.