Here are their main arguments: The US has defined China as its main strategic rival. Therefore, the US has taken aggressive and restrictive measures against China in terms of propaganda, economic and military cooperation and technological and cultural exchanges. Apart from taking actions themselves, the US has instigated the participation of its allies and partners for concerted actions. All those mean that the US containment on China has become a reality, enough to constitute a new Cold War. Although this new Cold War has not yet arrived, it could eventually become a reality as the situation intensifies.

Are they right? In fact, the key features of the last cold war were as follows: The US and the Soviet Union, based on confrontational ideology, aimed at disintegrating or assimilating each other. They took every aggressive action except initiating a war, to advance their overall strength and expand their respective sphere of influence while at the same time weakening the other. Their diplomatic policies included: suppressing the rival party in politics and ideology, and in terms of the military, they engaged in an arms race, built their own system of alliances and partner networks and started wars in other regions as agents or supporters. In economic terms, they built parallel markets, separated from one another in cultural, technological and human exchanges.

With that standard of what constitutes a cold war in mind, let’s turn to China-US relations.

In the new era, China has continued with its ideology of Socialism with Chinese characteristics, with domestic and diplomatic goals of achieving the China Dream and building a community with a shared future for mankind. Diplomatically, China upholds a new type of international relations with win-win cooperation at its core, promoting globalization. China is committed to be “ a builder of world peace, contributor to global development, and defender of the international order”, and to provide China wisdom and proposals for solution of issues facing the mankind.

Meanwhile, China will not copy foreign modes of development on the whole and won’t impose the Chinese model on other countries, meaning China won’t ask other countries to do as China does. In terms of its relationship with the US, China speaks about the two nations building a new type of international relations so as to avoid Thucydides’s Trap, expressing that it is neither a so-called international sheriff nor holds hopes of replacing others.

Clearly, China has no intention to disintegrate or assimilate the US, and also has no intention of starting an arms race with the US. China advocates partnership diplomacy without any system of alliances. In economic terms, China constantly formulates new open policies to strengthen cultural, technological and human exchanges with all other countries. The key of the Belt and Road Initiative lies in economics and culture. The multilateralism that China has constructed with other countries is open, as is evident in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank,  Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia(CICA) and the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific(FTAAP). Furthermore, China currently engages in or has plans to carry out cooperation with Japan, South Korea and Singapore in third countries.

From the US perspective, a consensus was reached after years of debate: The US has to adjust its policies and mindset toward China after the failure of a strategy used since the Nixon Administration — guidinging China to the US-led international order through engagement. In the US view, with the rapid growth of China’s overall strength, China has become more and more aggressive in its diplomacy and even threatened other countries, especially neighboring middle and small countries, in various ways. China has also stepped backward in political democratization. In terms of its economy, China’s state capitalism has highlighted the competitive disadvantages of the US’s market capitalism, while China has also influenced the technological advantages of developed countries including the US through compulsory technology transfer and intellectual property theft. Industrial policies such as “Made in China 2025” will improve China’s technology in systematically threaten the advantages of the US. Chinese students and technological personnels in the US are exactly the tools that China can use to steal US technologies. In cultural terms, China is penetrating into the US through Confucius Institutes and various media organizations. It is unlikely at this moment that China and the US will enter a real war, for China is not a new Soviet Union and its overall strength is still inferior compared to that of the US. However,considering the fact that China is experiencing rapid growth,America must quit its unilateral compromise to China and pay attention to quid pro quo. That is, US-China relations must be based on reciprocality If China fails to do so, the US  will fight back.  . At the same time, the US requires China to conform to a rules-based order in international affairs, especially in diplomatic affairs with China’s neighbors.

The views of the Trump administration are as follows: the administration will focus on American interests and homeland affairs, emphasizing the protection of homeland manufacturing, energy, technology and infrastructure and protecting the interests of the military-industrial sector and victims of globalization. The administration will  reject to shoulder too many overseas obligations and leave more responsibilities to allies and partners if it needs to step some international affairs. Additionally, the administration is not interested in global leadership and value diplomacy, and chooses to participate in international affairs only on some particulare issues or limited areas In terms of diplomatic policies toward China, the Trump administration is oriented toward taking a hard line against China. They are trying to exclude pro-China colleagues to avoid the “failures” of the previous government. Under the promotion of regional allies and partners, the US only participates in hotspot issues such as the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the East China Sea issue, the Taiwan question and the South China Sea issue. Such participation is under the premise that other countries shoulder more responsibilities and obligations, therefore allowing the US to take more flexible and efficient measures.

In conclusion, China will continue its tone of cooperation rather than confrontation in terms of its diplomacy with the US.  “New Cold War” is not a persuasive argument because China won’t participate in such a war. Certainly, in terms of diplomatic policies toward the US, China isto be more positive in terms of setting an agenda, more steadfast in maintaining its bottom line and more flexible in diplomacy. China may show its flexibility so long as the US doesn’t challenge  China’s core interests, such as the Taiwan question.

The US remains the stronger playerin terms of China-US relations. However, the US won’t apply to China the policies it once used toward the Soviet Union. Instead, the US aims at gaining tangible profits from reducing China’s “impropriate” advantages (such as service market access) through flexible but determined approaches under the premise of not triggering a wide-scale conflict.

As a result, China-US relations are not in a new cold war but in an situation of intertwined competition in which their interests are tangled. This cold  wrestle (intertwined competition) is aimed at finding new equilibrium of  interest  between  China-US  through  each issue.

It's worth emphasizing that it is almost impossible  for China and the US to start a new Cold War even if tensions continue to escalate because their relationship lacks the key features of what constituted the cold war that occurred between the US and the Soviet Union.

By Xue Li, director and senior fellow at Department of the International Strategyof the Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Science

 This piece was published on China Focus,