Is this the Beginning of a New Cold War?

A ChinaFile Conversation

By Ali Wyne, Yuen Yuen Ang & more on December 11, 2018

Beyond complicating trade negotiations between the United States and China, the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou has renewed concerns that the two countries are embarking on a new Cold War, based on economic preeminence and technological innovation but also extending into the military and ideological domains. What are the similarities and differences between U.S.-China competition and U.S.-Soviet competition? Over what exactly are the two countries competing? And what would it mean for the United States or China to “win” today’s Cold War, assuming that one is indeed occurring?

Abraham M. Denmark

on December 10, 2018

Abraham M. Denmark directs the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where he is also a Senior Fellow in the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States. He previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia. The views expressed are his own.

Yuen Yuen Ang

on December 10, 2018

Yuen Yuen Ang is a Political Scientist at the University of Michigan and a 2018 Andrew Carnegie Fellow for scholarship on “the most pressing issues of our times.”

Ali Wyne

on December 10, 2018

Ali Wyne was a Senior Analyst with Eurasia Group’s Global Macro-Geopolitics practice from 2020 to 2023.

Wyne served as a Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 2008 to 2009, working for Minxin Pei and Michael Swaine, and as a research assistant at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs from 2009 to 2012, working for Graham Allison. He served as a Senior Advisor at the State Department in 2013, working on a team that prepared Samantha Power for her confirmation hearing to be Ambassador to the United Nations. He served as a part-time research assistant at the Council on Foreign Relations from 2013 to 2014, helping Robert Blackwill and Jennifer Harris conduct research for their book War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft (2016). He served on the RAND Corporation’s adjunct staff from 2014 to 2015, working with the late Richard Solomon on the “Strategic Rethink” series. He returned to RAND in 2017 and served as a Policy Analyst in its Defense and Political Sciences Department until 2020. Wyne has also been a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a Nonresident Fellow at the Modern War Institute.

Wyne graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with dual degrees in Management Science and Political Science (2008) and received his Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School (2017), where he was a course assistant to Joseph Nye. While at the Kennedy School, he served as a part-time research assistant at the German Marshall Fund, helping Derek Chollet conduct research for his book The Long Game: How Obama Defied Washington and Redefined America’s Role in the World (2016).

Wyne is a coauthor of Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World (2013) and the author of America’s Great-Power Opportunity: Revitalizing U.S. Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition (2022), which The Spectator named one of its 2022 books of the year.

Wyne is a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project and a U.S. Army “Mad Scientist.” He is also a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former David Rockefeller Fellow with the Trilateral Commission. He serves on Foreign Policy for America’s Board of Directors and on the American Pakistan Foundation’s Leadership Council.

Wyne has participated in the Manfred-Wörner-Seminar (2015), the Penn Kemble Forum Fellowship (2017-2018), the Taiwan-U.S. Policy Program (2019), and the Atlantik-Brücke Young Leaders Program (2019). In 2019, the Diversity in National Security Network (DINSN) and New America recognized him as one of 40 Asian American and Pacific Islander national security and foreign policy next-generation leaders, and in 2022, DINSN and the Center for Strategic and International Studies recognized him as one of 50 U.S. national security and foreign affairs leaders. In 2023, he attended the Munich Security Conference as a member of the BMW Foundation’s Responsible Leaders cohort.

Susan Thornton

on December 10, 2018

Susan Thornton is a Senior Fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, which she joined following a 28-year diplomatic career. She most recently served as Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Devising a New Formula for Global Leadership

A China in the World Podcast

By Paul Haenle & Yan Xuetong on December 7, 2018

Yan asserts the U.S.-China relationship is experiencing structural disruptions, the resolution of which will have a lasting impact on the two countries. He says the tensions in the U.S.-China relationship are primarily due to the narrowing gap between the two countries’ national strength. Going forward, the United States and China need to address their own domestic problems related to economic growth and technological development before resolving foreign policy issues. China should focus on strengthening its regional position before moving too quickly into other parts of the globe. The Trump administration has made clear that it will forsake traditional U.S. global leadership roles, Yan says, but China does not yet have the capacity to supplant the United States in the international arena. This new dynamic stresses the need for the two countries to establish a framework that allows for joint leadership, as neither is willing or able to lead unilaterally.

Managing a Fragile Transition in U.S.-China Relations

A China in the World Podcast

By Paul Haenle & Cui Liru on December 7, 2018

Haenle and Cui discuss lessons from the past 40 years of the bilateral relationship, central areas of cooperation and competition, and a future framework that will allow China and the U.S. to avoid conflict. Cui asserts that U.S. and Chinese interests are not fundamentally incompatible, but that the relationship is in a fragile transition period that will require each country to work harder to better understand the other side’s common and diverging interests.

‘The Events Were Regrettable’

George H.W. Bush and China

By Perry Link on December 6, 2018

In late February 1989, a month after becoming president, Bush visited Beijing and invited roughly 500 people to a “Texas barbecue” at a posh Beijing hotel. The invitees included Fang Lizhi, the famous astrophysicist and political dissident. The Chinese and U.S. governments both knew in advance about Fang’s invitation. There were tense consultations about it in both capitals. The Chinese side threatened that its leaders would not attend if Fang were in the room. But then, in the afternoon before the banquet was to happen, word came that they would attend. It seemed an impasse had been broken. What the Chinese side did not tell the U.S. was that it was marshalling hundreds of police to block Fang physically if he showed up. Fang did show up, and was indeed blocked and denied further transportation of any kind; police tailed him for three hours as he and his wife walked the chill streets of the city. The next day, the story blazed in headlines around the world.