In Search of a China Strategy

The world exhaled when President Trump and Xi Jinping struck their tactical détente in South Korea in October, slashing tariffs, pausing restrictions on exports, and reopening diplomatic channels. For the sixth time in as many months, Washington and Beijing both claimed victory, markets rallied, and pundits lauded efforts to “stabilize” the relationship.

Yet no amount of diplomatic choreography can substitute for an answer to the most essential question: What does the United States want from China?

It is the defining question of 21st-century geopolitics. Every other alliance, market, and security calculus orbits around it. The Biden administration maintained that US-China competition “is simply not going to resolve in a neat and decisive end state.” Trump has offered no clearer answer, oscillating between provocation and accommodation as different factions within his administration temporarily seize the reins of American foreign policy.

This evasion has consequences. The United States has assembled the most sophisticated apparatus for economic competition in its history—export controls that can reshape entire industries, investment restrictions that redirect global capital, and alliance networks spanning every continent. Yet Washington cannot articulate what this machinery is meant to produce. It alienates allies asked to bear economic costs for undefined objectives and inflicts tremendous pain on American industry, which must restructure supply chains for goals that shift monthly.

Refusing to set goals is not strategy—it is abdication. The 2025 National Security Strategy was supposed to impose coherence on a fractured policy. Instead, it articulated broad principles about American strength while sidestepping four choices that will define the future of global power.

What Should the United States Want from China?

The Biden administration pursued managed competition with China, which included limited areas of compelled cooperation. Some in Trump’s orbit now push for a far different strategy—a comprehensive confrontation that can weaken China’s relative power. Others support a transactional approach, which accepts and makes room for China’s rise in exchange for concrete economic concessions from Beijing.

Managed coexistence requires defining areas where cooperation serves US interests and defending them against domestic opposition.

Each answer carries costs that its advocates are often reticent to acknowledge. A competitive posture means bearing the economic pain of restructured supply chains, accepting that allies will not always follow America’s lead, and enduring China’s inevitable retaliation. Managed coexistence requires defining areas where cooperation serves US interests and defending them against domestic opposition. A purely transactional approach demands explaining why American values take a back seat to dealmaking—and accepting that deals with Beijing have lifespans measured in months and are liable to change.

Comprehensive cooperation between superpowers is difficult, perhaps impossible, to achieve in practice. Even during the height of the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union were able to sustain only limited cooperation in human spaceflight, nuclear nonproliferation, and confidence-building measures at sea. The cooperative agenda between the United States and China today is even less ambitious.

In the absence of clearly defined “safe zones,” no form of cooperation between the United States and China survives contact with domestic politics. A goal as noble as cancer research necessarily raises concerns about applications in bioweapons and custody of sensitive data. The path to one of the Biden administration’s most significant objectives—addressing climate change by capping methane and CO₂ emissions—rested on solar cells made with forced labor in Xinjiang and electric vehicles banned from the US market on national security grounds. Under Trump, resuming even milquetoast exchanges between Chinese and American students and scholars risks implicating inbound Chinese students in espionage and political influence and making Americans and their affiliates in China unwitting hostages to great power politics.

Where Washington and Beijing have been able to carve out narrow areas of cooperation—on counternarcotics, agricultural trade, and deepening communications between their militaries—both capitals have kept expectations low. China remains on the US list of Major Drug Producing Countries despite commitments to curb the sale of fentanyl precursors. Beijing cycles through soybean boycotts and record purchases as negotiating leverage rather than stable commerce. And on military communications, leaders from both countries seem to acknowledge that the meeting is the deliverable.

The United States has repeatedly traded away hard-won leverage for temporary market stability.

Yet pure competition carries its own costs. Export restrictions on advanced semiconductors have forced the restructuring of global supply chains at enormous expense to US industry and alienated allies who depend on Chinese markets. These costs could be justified if Washington consistently articulated what strategic objectives they serve. Instead, the United States has repeatedly traded away hard-won leverage for temporary market stability.

The US-China détente in South Korea exemplifies this pattern: Tariffs were slashed, and export controls eased for commitments that will expire the moment Beijing’s calculus shifts. This is not strategic competition but the worst of both worlds, paying the costs of confrontation while accepting the risks of accommodation.

The Trump administration should define clearly what the United States wants from China beyond demands to cease its repressive measures at home and destabilizing activities abroad. If there are still narrow areas where cooperation is not just possible but desirable—be they nonproliferation, counterterrorism, health, or food security—then senior administration officials will need to identify what they are, and muster the political courage to defend them. But if there is truly no common ground left to stand on, Washington should pursue forthright competition while acknowledging its costs.

What Are the Bounds of Economic and Technology Competition with China?

Trade has long served as a ballast to the fraught US-China political relationship. The Biden administration consistently maintained that the United States sought to derisk, not decouple, from China’s economy—a position then-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen articulated repeatedly. Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has echoed this language, stating, “We don’t need to decouple from China. We just have to derisk”—despite campaign rhetoric that included revoking permanent normal trade relations with China.

The disintegration of US-China trade has evolved in ways that neither side intended or anticipated. For example, the boundaries of the US “small-yard, high-fence” approach to technology competition have stretched beyond their initial preoccupation with national security and human rights. What began with targeted controls on advanced semiconductors and surveillance technology has since expanded to electric vehicles, pharmaceutical supply chains, port cranes, and consumer drones.

No industry today is insulated from concern that it may be used in China’s military modernization, implicated in egregious human rights violations, or enabled by unfair economic and trade practices. The Trump administration should decide whether to accept this reality or rein in the impulse to securitize every supply chain. If technology competition truly encompasses every sector where China seeks leadership—from quantum computing to biotechnology to clean energy—then America should be prepared to bear the economic costs of its slide toward full decoupling. If there are limits to this competition, Washington should articulate them clearly enough that American companies and allied governments can plan accordingly.

There is a defensible argument for either approach. Advocates of decoupling recognize that, under China’s strategy of military-civil fusion, nearly any advanced technology can and does contribute to Chinese military capabilities. It acknowledges that Beijing has systematically refused to play by market rules and worked assiduously to unlock asymmetric capabilities that threaten the United States and its allies. The risk is that broad restrictions alienate allies who depend on Chinese markets and force the issue of China’s technological self-sufficiency.

The narrower alternative—truly limiting controls to technologies with direct military applications and egregious human rights uses—requires painful trade-offs. It means accepting that China will lead in some civilian technologies. It means distinguishing between economic competition (where the goal is American competitiveness) and security competition (where the goal is Chinese incapability). Most difficult of all, it requires explaining to domestic constituencies why some forms of economic interdependence serve American interests even as others threaten them.

What the United States cannot sustain is the current incoherence: a policy that expands or retracts controls based on the demands of whichever faction has gained temporary ascendancy, without a theory of what we are trying to achieve or what costs we are willing to bear. The Trump administration’s record on technology competition will be defined by whether it imposes discipline on this process or succumbs to it.

What Role Should China Play in the World?

China has simultaneously become the linchpin of an “axis of upheaval”—deepening ties with Russia, Iran, and North Korea in ways that threaten the international order—and positioned itself as a world leader with an extraordinary capacity for statecraft that wields tremendous influence over America’s declared enemies.

If the Trump administration is serious about ending the war in Ukraine, it should force Xi to carry the price of Putin’s war effort.

Among these US adversaries, the most urgent challenge is Russia. Chinese companies have largely succeeded in reconstituting the Russian defense industrial base, supplying everything from machine tools and drone components to empty artillery shells and the nitrocellulose required to fill them. Most in Washington now seem to acknowledge the futility of trying to drive a wedge between the two countries—their authoritarian solidarity and shared anti-Americanism have only deepened under pressure. But this does not mean Beijing’s role is fixed or that American policy should treat it as such. If the Trump administration is serious about ending the war in Ukraine, it should force Xi to carry the price of Putin’s war effort. This means secondary sanctions on Chinese firms enabling Russia’s defense production and coordinated restrictions on dual-use technology flows.

The calculus grows more complex when considering China’s role beyond Ukraine. Beijing holds unique leverage over Pyongyang, Tehran, and various regional conflicts. Some cases—such as preventing nuclear proliferation or containing regional conflicts that could spiral—present a limited but genuine alignment of Chinese and American interests. This is coordination, not cooperation—parallel action by powers that remain competitors but share specific vulnerabilities. The challenge is distinguishing between areas where Chinese influence serves American interests and where it categorically undermines them.

The contradiction runs deeper still. China has positioned itself as a responsible steward of global governance—increasing funding for the United Nations, securing leadership roles in key international organizations, and championing BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank as alternatives to Western-led institutions. These moves force Washington to decide whether the United States should welcome China shouldering more of the burdens of global governance, consistent with the transactional view that America is overextended, or if it should view any expansion of Chinese influence in international institutions as a threat.

The National Security Strategy gestures at this tension through its rhetoric about “burden-sharing” and allies assuming “primary responsibility for their regions,” yet never clarifies what role China should or should not play in this reconfigured order. The result is drift: allowing Beijing to present itself as a reliable partner to the developing world while America vacillates between leading, following, and exiting.

The Trump administration should articulate where it will defend to the hilt an American sphere of influence, where it will contest Chinese attempts to supplant American leadership, and where it can tolerate or welcome Beijing shouldering burdens of global governance. The alternative is to cede these complexities to Beijing, which excels at exploiting American ambiguity.

What Kind of China Can the United States Live With?

This final question is the most difficult to answer because it demands that we define America’s purpose in a changing world. During the Cold War, American strategy evolved from containment to détente to a hope that the Soviet system would ultimately reform or collapse. With China, the objective has always been more ambiguous. The engagement era assumed that economic integration would liberalize Chinese politics. That assumption is now resoundingly dead.

To replace it, some voices call for a comprehensive confrontation aimed at weakening the Chinese Communist Party. Others advocate a purely realist competition focused on capabilities rather than values. Still others maintain that defending human rights in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan remains a core American interest worth significant cost.

The Trump administration cannot avoid this choice. How it responds when Beijing moves to control the Dalai Lama’s succession will reveal whether Tibetan religious freedom warrants sustained confrontation. Whether it imposes lasting costs for Hong Kong’s crushed autonomy will clarify whether political repression is negotiable. Its approach to Taiwan will demonstrate whether the United States will risk escalation to defend democratic sovereignty.

The United States does not need to resolve the internal debate about Chinese governance. But it should define the conditions under which it can coexist with an authoritarian China that rejects liberal norms. It should distinguish between behaviors America will grudgingly tolerate, behaviors it will actively contest, and behaviors that constitute red lines for which it will impose some cost.

Without this clarity, American policy will remain a collection of tactical responses to Chinese actions, held together by bureaucratic inertia and the lowest common denominator of factional agreement.

The Case for a China Strategy

President Trump entered office promising coherence in America’s China policy after years of drift. One year on, he is failing—not from poor execution of a strategy but the absence of one.

Allies who counter China economically also depend on Chinese markets, and burden-sharing demands can alienate the partners needed for collective action

The National Security Strategy offers a framework for thinking about China without resolving the hard choices competition requires. The document calls for allies to “counteract predatory economic practices” while deepening relations with India and organizing burden-sharing arrangements—but provides no mechanism for adjudicating when these objectives conflict. They inevitably do: Allies who counter China economically also depend on Chinese markets, and burden-sharing demands can alienate the partners needed for collective action. This rhetoric papers over rather than resolves the fundamental contradictions between economic nationalism, hard-power competition, and transactional restraint that have come to dominate the Trump administration’s approach.

Succeeding in competition with China does not require choosing maximalist confrontation or total accommodation, nor does it demand perfect foresight about how competition will unfold—but it does demand making difficult choices about what outcomes America seeks and what costs it is willing to bear to achieve them. The four questions posed here do not exhaust the complexity of US-China relations. But answering them would give American policy what it desperately needs: a theory of victory in the most consequential contest of our time.

Ryan Fedasiuk is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on US-China relations, technology, and national power.