Series ・ 10 parts

The US-China Great Game: A Century of Two Powers

At the end of the 19th century, two great powers on either side of the Pacific met in earnest for the first time. The same nation that demanded China open its door also shut its own door to Chinese immigrants. This is the origin of an American view of China where hope and prejudice lived side by side.

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01 When Two Great Powers Met — The Era of the Open Door and Chinese Exclusion At the end of the 19th century, two great powers on either side of the Pacific met in earnest for the first time. The same nation that demanded China open its door also shut its own door to Chinese immigrants. This is the origin of an American view of China where hope and prejudice lived side by side.
02 From Alliance to Enmity — World War II and the Chinese Revolution Facing a common enemy in Japan, America and China became allies. But when the war ended, revolution swept China, and the newly born People's Republic of China traded fire directly with America on the Korean Peninsula. This is the story of a sudden reversal, from friends to foes, in the span of just a few years.
03 The Shock of Nixon in China — The Great Turn of 1972 Two nations that had traded gunfire in the Korean War shook hands in Beijing twenty years later. The trigger was a single ping-pong ball and a lone adviser who flew in secret. Facing a common Soviet rival, Nixon the anti-communist crusader pried open the bamboo curtain in 1972. This is the story of the great turn that redrew the map of the Cold War and made the world hold its breath.
04 The Wager of Engagement — Reform and Opening and the WTO Black cat or white cat, the cat that catches mice is a good cat — these words from Deng Xiaoping transformed a poor socialist nation into the workshop of the world. From reform and opening to WTO accession in 2001. This is the story of the ideal of America's enormous wager, the engagement policy that believed China would grow free as it grew rich, and the doubts that took root afterward.
05 Chimerica: The Honeymoon and Distortions of Interdependence China became the workshop of the world, while America kept consuming. The two became intertwined like a single economic body and were dubbed Chimerica. Yet beneath that honeymoon, the hollowing-out of manufacturing and a gulf in values were quietly spreading.
06 Values That Pass Each Other By: Tiananmen, Human Rights, Taiwan, Hong Kong The Tiananmen incident of 1989 laid bare, in broad daylight, the gulf in values lying at the bottom of the US-China honeymoon. Human rights and the system, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang. Two countries bound together in economics quietly deepened their conflict over a line they would never cross.
07 Xi Jinping vs. America First — The Trade War Begins Get rich, and China will change — that was the hope. It crumbled with the rise of two leaders. Xi Jinping, who championed the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and Trump, who shouted America First. In 2018, the world's two largest economies drew the weapon of tariffs against each other. This is the story of how the trade war announced the end of the honeymoon.
08 The Technology Cold War — Semiconductors, 5G, Data The exchange of tariffs soon changed form into a fight over technology itself. Sanctions on Huawei, export controls on semiconductors, the contest for hegemony over 5G and data. The U.S. and China began trying to cut the world economy in two. This is a factual account of the front line of a new cold war, the one called decoupling.
09 Taiwan, the Powder Keg — The Greatest Flashpoint The US-China struggle, having moved from tariffs to technology, finally converges on a single island. Taiwan. The principle of one China, the military balance across the Taiwan Strait, and an island that holds the world's most advanced semiconductors. This place, where economics and security intersect, has become the flashpoint most feared to spark a clash between the two great powers. Here we unravel its structure.
10 Beyond the Thucydides Trap — The Course of a New Cold War When a ruling power and a challenging power meet, history has often chosen war — the Thucydides Trap. But is it destiny? A multipolar world, a rising Global South, economies entangled with one another. At the end of a hundred-year story, where lie the conditions for the US and China to avoid a clash and move toward coexistence? The final installment of the series.