Prelude

At the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC or CCP)1 in Beijing in October 2017, Party General Secretary Xi Jinping declared on behalf of the gathered political elites that China was entering a ‘new era’ of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Among the many points made at the Congress was an affirmation that ‘peace and development remain irreversible trends’, a reference to a central notion in the Party's public assessment of the global context within which the People's Republic of China (PRC) had developed since the 1980s. However, China's external political environment was changing. A year later, this was made clear when then United States (US) Vice President Mike Pence elaborated on a different ‘new era’, one of great power competition, in a speech which set out a confrontational policy of strategic rivalry with China (Pence, 2018). It followed the publication in December 2017 of the first National Security Strategy of the US administration led by President Donald Trump, which described the return of ‘great power competition’, with China and Russia ‘contesting [the US’s] geopolitical advantages and trying to change the international order in their favor’ (National Security Strategy, 2017, p 27).

The extent of the deterioration in US– China relations and the changes in China's external environment have become more apparent over time.