ABSTRACT
The deterioration in United States–China relations did not begin with the election of Donald Trump, but it has deepened and accelerated during his presidency. Hopes that ties between Washington and Beijing would remain relatively stable after the April 2017 Mar-a-Lago summit were dashed later that year when the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy (NSS), which labelled China, alongside Russia, a ‘rival’ and ‘revisionist power’ seeking to ‘shape a world antithetical to US values and interests’. 1 Following on its heels, the 2018 National Defense Strategy branded China a ‘strategic competitor’ and charged that it was ‘leveraging military modernisation, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce neighboring countries to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to their advantage’. 2 In December 2019, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper declared that China is the top strategic concern for the Pentagon, ahead of Russia. 3
