Is the US-China rivalry over?

US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping have agreed to manage their rivalry rather than let it manage them. (Reuters: Kenny Holston) Link copiedShareShare articleFor nearly a decade, the world has braced for a collision. The dominant United States and a rising China, locked in escalating strategic competition, were said to be hurtling towards a Thucydides Trap that history suggested would be almost impossible to avoid. The US and China have been rivals for almost 80 years, but when the countries' leaders met in Beijing on Thursday, Xi Jinping made reference to a far more ancient feud. This week in Beijing, both Donald Trump and Xi Jinping quietly admitted something the rest of the world has been slow to grasp. Neither of them can afford the collision. The summit produced no breakthrough trade deal, no joint statement, no big announcement on Taiwan. And yet what it delivered may turn out to be more consequential than any of those things. The public outline of a new global order. One in which the US and China are not enemies, not rivals, and not partners in the warm Western sense. They are something newer and harder to name. Two structurally interdependent superpowers who have decided, for now, to manage their rivalry rather than let it manage them. At the state banquet on Thursday night, Xi put the new compact in language no Chinese leader has previously offered an American counterpart in such direct terms. "The China-US relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the world," he said. Beijing gave the framework a name: a "constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability". Xi spelled it out in four phrases. Positive stability with cooperation as the mainstay. Sound stability with moderate competition. Constant stability with manageable differences. Enduring stability with promises of peace. Trump endorsed it. Beijing says the framework will guide bilateral relations for the next three years and beyond. Read carefully, that is not a thaw. It is the architecture of a new bipolar order. US President Donald Trump visited the Zhongnanhai Garden with Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Reuters: Evan Vucci) What was striking about Beijing this week was not just the warmth of the welcome that Xi has staged, it was the unprecedented openness. Cameras were granted access to Zhongnanhai, China's most secretive political compound, in numbers nearly no foreign press has ever enjoyed. Xi gave Trump a tour of trees four centuries old, told him the seeds of Chinese roses were on their way home as a gift, and walked beside him into rooms that almost no foreign leader has ever entered. The only other one to have stood there, it should be said, is Vladimir Putin. Xi framed the access in personal terms. He told Trump in front of the cameras that he had "chosen this place especially to reciprocate the hospitality extended to me in 2017 at Mar-a-Lago". It was a private courtesy returned. Trump went further. He called the relationship "the G2" — the world's two most important countries. At the banquet he called Xi "my friend" and described the visit as one of "the most consequential relationships in world history". He traced the connection between the two peoples back 250 years. "It's a special world," he said, "with the two of us united and together." That is the speech of a US president acknowledging a shared story. Nothing in it reads like he will contain a rival. At the Zhongnanhai tea on Friday, Trump matched Xi's warmth. He said the two had known each other "almost 12 years" and had "settled problems other people wouldn't have been able to settle". The first test is already in front of them. It is the Strait of Hormuz. Both leaders publicly agreed this week that the strait should be reopened. Xi indicated he would press Tehran behind the scenes. Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit US President Donald Trump in Washington for a reciprocal state visit in September. (Reuters: Evan Vucci) What is on the calendar is September 24. That is when Xi will arrive in Washington for the reciprocal state visit Trump confirmed before his departure from China. It is also, effectively, the deadline for the two most powerful men in the world. If the Middle East war is not resolved by then, Xi will land in Washington without the commitment he made this week. The G2 will face its first practical test having failed it. There was no joint statement issued from Beijing this week. But what Trump delivered at Zhongnanhai, with Xi standing beside him, read like one. For more than a decade, the US-China relationship has been described in black and white. Rivals or partners. Containment or appeasement. Decoupling or engagement. Democracy or authoritarianism. This week, both leaders quietly retired the narrative. What they care about most sits in the grey area in between: trade, energy, Iran, supply chains, agriculture and Chinese international students. The bet is that the grey w

Is the US-China rivalry over?

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