The world has not slid into a simple US–China bipolar order but become “two superpowers and many strong powers”, veteran Peking University scholar Wang Jisi has warned, pointing to a relationship plagued by structural confrontation, deep misunderstandings and rising risks of conflict.
In a wide-ranging virtual conversation last Friday at the University of Hong Kong’s Centre on Contemporary China and the World (CCCW), Wang voiced concerns about America’s inward turn under US President Donald Trump, its pursuit of containment in both geopolitical and geoeconomic terms, and mounting cross-strait tensions.
He dismissed the notion that Washington had “attitude, not strategy” towards Beijing, describing the newly released US National Security Strategy (NSS) as “symbolically important” but filled with contradictions.
“I do think the United States has an attitude towards China, but it also has strategies towards China,” Wang told CCCW director Cheng Li. “But it is difficult to define the strategy, especially the current strategy of the Trump administration.”
One of the most striking elements of the NSS, according to Wang, is its declaration of the western hemisphere as Washington’s top strategic priority – above Asia, Europe or the Middle East – in an unusual shift that reflects a country increasingly consumed by internal challenges.
“The United States is looking inward, very much so than in the past ... curbing illegal immigration, curbing drug trafficking, especially fentanyl ... This is where Maga and his supporters come from,” Wang said, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
Wang said that despite its relatively mild rhetoric towards China, the NSS had broadened the scope of national security beyond military threats to include economic, technological and homeland vulnerabilities.
“Rhetorically, the document is less hostile to China, but in essence, I think US policy towards China is still one of containment ... not only from a geopolitical perspective, but also from a geoeconomic perspective,” he said.
Taiwan was mentioned eight times, he noted, underscoring the self-ruled island’s strategic and technological importance as a chip producer for the US.
“Washington has not changed its policy towards Taiwan, as some people hoped it might soften its stance because it needs China economically. I do not agree with that,” Wang said.
He argued that Trump’s approach to Beijing, and to Taiwan in particular, was “even more consistent with the [Joe] Biden and [Barack] Obama administrations and his first term” than many observers assumed.
Wang also rejected the idea that the world had returned to a Cold War‑style bipolar structure.
“I define the current structure of world politics as two superpowers and many strong powers,” he said.
While Washington and Beijing are the two “most powerful” states, the world lacks the rival alliance blocs that once defined the US-Soviet rivalry in the Cold War era, according to Wang. US‑led alliances had remained intact but weakened, while China “doesn’t have many allies”, he said. “We are a non‑aligned country. So this is not bipolar.”
Most countries today are “multi‑aligned”, seeking to maintain ties with both Washington and Beijing, according to Wang.
“European countries are allied with the United States, but they also want to strengthen relationships with China and India and other countries,” he said. “This is a structure that is very different from the past.”
For Wang, the most important global divide is still between developed countries and developing countries, or the Global North and Global South.
He dismissed Trump’s invocation of a US-China “G2” or “Group of Two”, arguing it could potentially marginalise the Global South, even if some Chinese might welcome Washington’s implicit acknowledgement of China as a “number two” power.
Noting that Beijing had yet to formally respond to Trump’s use of the phrase to describe his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in October, Wang said: “Most Chinese do not like the word G2 ... because G2 doesn’t appeal to any other country. Not a single other country I can think of would agree with this concept.”
“It is simply Trump’s wording and it will not be accepted by China.”
While he agreed that mutual misperceptions were a key factor driving bilateral tensions, Wang drew a distinction between disagreements over facts, such as China’s growth rate, which could ultimately be reconciled, and disagreements over intentions, which were far harder to bridge.
“What you see as misperceptions may be seen by others as right perceptions,” he said, calling perception a “theoretical and conceptual puzzle”.
Beijing describes its aims as “peaceful coexistence”, a “community of shared future for mankind” and “win‑win cooperation”, but Wang noted that many Americans remained unconvinced.
He pointed to influential US books such as Michael Pillsbury’s The Hundred‑Year Marathon and Rush Doshi’s The Long Game, which argue that China seeks to reshape the world order by undermining American influence and displacing US power.
“They will cite their evidence; we have our evidence. Arguing this way may not be very helpful,” he cautioned.
Comparing the US today with what he first encountered in 1984, Wang described “a new, unrecognisable United States” – marked by partisan polarisation, inequality, inflation, ethnic tensions, violence, extremism and culture wars.
“This United States ... is a miniature of the world,” he said, with challenges such as inequality, identity politics and the rise of right-wing politicians spreading from Latin America to Europe and Japan.
While many in China welcome a weaker America, Wang said he personally hoped the US could “come back” and restore “political, economic and social balance”, rejecting narratives that saw US weakness as China’s gain.
Asked whether Xi intended to resolve the Taiwan issue during his term, Wang reaffirmed Beijing’s formal commitment to peaceful unification and “one country, two systems”, even as he acknowledged rising pro‑independence sentiment and shifting identities on the island.
“We have to be very strategically patient ... The two parts of China can finally talk to each other and gradually integrate with each other. And that is my hope,” he said, while noting nationalist calls on social media for a military takeover.
But when pressed on the probability of a US-China military conflict within the next decade, Wang put the odds at 30 per cent.
Yet he challenged the assumption that more contact automatically produced trust.
“Do more understandings of the other country lead to more respect and less competition?” he said. “My answer is: not necessarily.”
Pointing to Doshi and Pillsbury, he argued that greater familiarity might not produce greater respect, unlike the Mao-Nixon era, when limited knowledge coexisted with a degree of strategic trust.
He added that younger Chinese studying in America today often viewed Americans not as mentors but as peers or even rivals.
“There are more hawks on both sides. The more we know the US, do we necessarily love it more? I don’t know,” he said.
Still, he said, “There should be more interactions ... dialogues, quality exchanges. They are all right.”
Despite his generally pessimistic outlook, Wang estimated there was an 80 per cent chance that Xi would visit the US in 2026 if Trump travelled to China as scheduled in April. He added that Xi would most likely travel towards the end of next year during the Group of 20 summit in the US. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
