CICIR's Vice President on the US's new China Strategy

Wang Honggang on Washington's "new two-pronged approach" towards China, the difficulties it faces and his proposed response.

Today’s edition is a summary of a recent article by Wang Honggang (王鸿刚), vice president of China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) – an influential think tank linked to China's Ministry of State Security. This post was put together by dxh, a journalist who wishes to remain anonymous.

Sinification will be taking a break over the next couple of weeks. Happy holidays.

In a nutshell

• The US’s strategy towards China has shifted from a paradigm of “engagement + prevention” to one of “competition + managing competition”.

• The distinguishing features of this new approach appear to be: using “mixed signals”, showing “self-restraint” and keeping a “window for dialogue” open in order both to prevent Beijing from overreacting to Washington’s containment of China and to preserve some degree of cooperation with the PRC.

• This strategy is faced with four main difficulties:

  1. The flip-flopping of policies between Republicans and Democrats
  2. Creating alliances without creating foes
  3…