How mutual mistrust drives US-Chinese tensions upwards

China’s President Xi says his country’s rise does not mean war with the US is inevitable. But many in Washington and beyond still see great-power rivalry as a path that ends in confrontation.

On 30 October 2025 President Donald Trump met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in the South Korean city of Busan, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. Their meeting was the culmination of ministerial talks held in Madrid in September, which opened the door to a de-escalation of the trade war launched by the US president. Described by Trump as ‘an amazing meeting’ (he even rated it 12 out of 10), the Busan talks above all highlighted the limits of Washington’s strategy of weaponising interdependence when faced with a rival that can now compete with the US in this arena.

While both sides backpedalled – the US on the tariffs it had been threatening China with, and Beijing on its readiness to restrict rare-earth exports – it is generally recognised that China came out of the talks on top. As well as the failure of Washington’s abrupt attempt at commercial coercion, the more innovative levers used by the White House since the election of Joe Biden (2021-25) – controls on the semiconductor trade, barriers to investment etc – now appear to be largely ineffective. Rather than hampering China’s growth in key scientific and technological sectors, these measures have, according to the Brookings Institution, ‘helped spur the development of China’s defensive and offensive tech-industrial capabilities’.

The truce is not the end of the story. Nothing has been resolved, and the mutual distrust which has grown since the 2010s still lingers. The Pentagon is encouraging the White House to ‘prioritise defence of the US homeland and … deterring China in the Indo-Pacific’. while China has given up on the idea of a ‘new type of major power relations’ (meaning more harmonious) that it talked about in the early 2010s.

On the eve of the 9 May Victory Day parade in Moscow, Xi compared the current situation to the 1940s. Referring to what he called ‘the righteous forces of the world, including China and the USSR, [which] (…)

Full article: 2 147 words.

Philip S Golub

Philip S Golub is professor of international relations at the American University of Paris and the author of East Asia’s Reemergence, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2016.

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