Course correction: an emerging US strategy for countering China

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a significant course correction in US–China policy. It examines the increasingly broad dissatisfaction with China policy, which has resulted in an apparent end the era of intensive engagement and led to a hardening of the US approach to China across the policy spectrum, as exemplified by the critique of and incipient efforts to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Design/methodology/approach

The research draws on primary and secondary source material to identify evidence of and examine the rationale behind the shift from the USA’s decades-long “engagement” approach toward an in intensifying strategic competition with China.

Findings

A course correction in US–China policy has been years in the making, and as most now argue is long overdue. The idea that China has emerged as America’s foremost strategic competitor is widely accepted, and indeed deeply ingrained in the thinking of most US foreign affairs professionals. It is also starkly evident in current US declaratory policy and increasingly in its operational policy as well.

Research limitations/implications

The research offers a fresh perspective on the domestic and diplomatic dimensions of China’s rising.

Originality/value

The research builds on the latest scholarship on the growth of China’s geopolitical challenge to the USA to explore the development of China–US tensions and rivalries at all levels from the Bush and Obama eras to the present.

Citation

Calabrese, J. (2020), "Course correction: an emerging US strategy for countering China", Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 81-97. https://doi.org/10.1108/STICS-04-2020-0009