Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi, both former officials in the Biden administration, dive into why the narrative of China's decline is misleading. They discuss the strategic shifts in China's foreign policy under Xi Jinping, including military expansion and the Belt and Road Initiative. The pair assert that America must reassess its alliances in Asia to enhance stability and counter threats. They also touch on escalating trade tensions and the systemic complexity behind U.S.-China negotiations, emphasizing the need for strong diplomacy to navigate these challenges.
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insights INSIGHT
China's Multifaceted Power
China's economic slowdown doesn't negate its growing technological and strategic power.
The U.S. must recognize that China's other strengths can still pose a significant challenge.
insights INSIGHT
Flawed Assumptions
The U.S. previously assumed that engagement would lead China to adopt similar political and economic systems.
This assumption proved to be incorrect, as China has maintained its distinct path.
insights INSIGHT
China's Resolve and Miscalculations
Kurt Campbell's experience reinforced his view of China's determination to challenge the U.S.
China believes in American decline, overestimates its own power, and underestimates U.S. capacity for international alliances and domestic investments.
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Rush Doshi's "The Long Game" meticulously examines China's grand strategy since the end of the Cold War. Drawing from extensive primary source material, including party documents and memoirs, Doshi unveils China's long-term ambitions. The book details China's strategic phases: blunting, building, and expansion, highlighting shifts in approach based on perceived power dynamics with the US. Doshi's analysis provides crucial insights into China's intentions and the implications for US policy. The book's comprehensive research and clear presentation make it a valuable resource for understanding the complexities of US-China relations.
For years in U.S. foreign policy circles, discussions of China focused on its growing wealth, power, and ambition, and the fear that it would supplant the United States.
But a few years ago, the conversation took a sharp turn. Rather than fixating on China’s rise, most analysis began to focus on the country’s stagnation and even decline. There were good reasons for this: disappointing post-COVID economic growth, dire demographics, and a foreign policy alienating much of the world. And so a new consensus took hold—that a weakened China might not overtake the United States after all.
In a new essay for Foreign Affairs, Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi argue that this new consensus dangerously underestimates Chinese power and the challenge it represents for U.S. foreign policy. Washington, they warn, is missing Beijing’s key strategic advantage—an advantage that only a new approach to alliances will offset. As they write, if America goes it alone, “the contest for the next century will be China’s to lose.”
Campbell is the chairman and a co-founder of The Asia Group and served as deputy secretary of state and Indo-Pacific coordinator at the National Security Council during the Biden administration. Doshi is an assistant professor at Georgetown University and director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations, and served as deputy senior director for China and Taiwan affairs at the National Security Council during the Biden administration. They joined Dan Kurtz-Phelan on April 14 to discuss the sources of Chinese power, what U.S. observers of China get wrong, and whether the Trump administration has an endgame in its confrontation with Beijing.
The Foreign Affairs Interview 
