The most potent question President Xi Jinping asked, speaking at China’s Great Hall, was an explosive question of power and war. It was a question to President Trump and the United States.
The context of Xi Jinping’s question is important to appreciate because as leader of China, which competes in every sphere with the US—space exploration, technology, including artificial intelligence and Quantum computing, resources, military strength, economy, finance, industry, logistics, air and sea capacity, trade and investment, and which can match the US in most areas and surpass it in some—Xi Jinping was questioning whether an “America First” philosophy is appropriate or even achievable?
Whether aggression and war are really the solutions to the power and dominance questions in the world?
And whether it is worth it to jeopardise the prosperity the world can achieve together and the things the US and China can achieve collaboratively by a clash of titans in war?
Wouldn’t a more desirable prospect for all be lasting peace, prosperity and stability?
Prompted by such thinking, the China President posed this question to President Trump’s face, boldly but gingerly as host, so that all of China and the US could consider it, and all of the world could examine the implications. And that question was: “Can China and the United States overcome the Thucydides Trap and create a new paradigm of major country relations?”
Such a question rejects the Trump notion of an America First, unipolar, America-dominant world. It posits that China and the US must engage each other freshly, and others respectfully, to create a multi polar world where war can be held at bay, conflicts can be minimised. Mutual respect and acceptance of each other’s gains and aspirations should yield a more collaborative, cooperative, prosperous, stable and peaceful world.
Xi Jinping used the word “stable” several times. It is a word well-chosen against the background of Trump’s disruptive style and his equally disruptive, combative approach to international engagement. Xi assesses Trump’s behaviour on the world stage as destablising.
Graham Allison, a professor of political science at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, wrote a book about the Thucydides Trap in 2017. I read this in 2022 after completing my book on Venezuelan migration in the Caribbean and when I was writing my book on China, and the Caribbean, together with Prof Roger Hosein and Dr Rebecca Gookool-Bosland.
I made reference in our China book to the Thucydides Trap, which Prof Allison identified as a theory of behaviour involving a dominant power and a rival, ascendant power, as the psychology of fear of military aggression plays out on both sides.
Prof Allison cites 17 case studies over 500 years, 12 of them resulting in war, beginning with the Athens/Sparta war from 431-404 BC. I concluded in our China book that this was one of the things Xi Jinping was acutely aware of and wanted to avoid; a mutually destructive, direct confrontation with the US.
As preparation for the book on China, I read three volumes of Xi Jinping’s speeches on a range of issues. This China President is focused on 2049, the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic, to celebrate China’s socialist achievements as a world superpower—the “Chinese Dream.”
Xi wants to avoid confrontation with the US but also does not like the imbalance of power which exists in the world now, and is working actively to create, fashion and make new rules for a multipolar world. Xi Jinping presents China to the world as the largest developing country that wants to champion their cause. This is antithetical to Trump’s “America First” position.
Xi Jinping has been invited to the White House in September 2026, two months before the US mid-term elections.
Xi Jinping also identified Taiwan as the dominant issue to be resolved between China and US. Why? Because from China’s point of view, it may be the red line between war and peace. To China, Taiwan is Chinese territory. To the US, Taiwan is an ally whose autonomy must be protected from Chinese over reach and domination. But Trump seems to have unresolved issues with Taiwan too.
We shall see things play out until September. Thereafter, we shall see what the September meeting will yield.
Trump will then be the host and Xi Jinping will likely be a good, if firm, guest. And the world will know better by then, how the future is likely to unfold.
