ABSTRACT
To conceive of post-Cold War Asia in binary terms reduces its history to an incomplete and much simplified version of reality. It also seemingly contradicts the previous chapter’s main findings. However, telling the story of US-China relations in the immediate post-Cold War era in Asia, and how this pivotal great power relationship took a sharp downturn from the late 2000s onwards, implicitly tells the story of regional order. This chapter demonstrates that US-China relations were not always as dire as they currently are but instead offered cause for considerable optimism. This is equally true of China’s relations with its many neighbours. Voices have always existed in the US, China, and the wider region that advocated a possible mutually shared, peaceful, and cooperative future. Alas, sometime around the global financial crisis (GFC), great power relations sunk to a low unseen since China’s opening to the (Western) world in the 1970s. This chapter discusses the downturn, the impact of domestic changes in the US under former president Donald Trump, and, even more importantly, what drives an increasingly assertive Chinese foreign and security policy under the leadership of Xi Jinping.
