We could sure use a modern version of the long telegram today as the U.S.-China geopolitical rivalry intensifies and the threat of a new Cold War looms. The assumption was that greater economic integration would contribute to democratic reform within China and its full partnership in global governance. False hopes about Chinese liberalization have thus been replaced with hardened views about the renewal of “great power competition.”Several commentators have come to describe it as a new Cold War. Vice-President Mike Pence has called it a battle for the “commanding heights of the 21st-century economy.”The tools of statecraft will therefore necessarily be different than in the Cold War. Many experts agree that the U.S.-China geopolitical and technological rivalry will likely shape the rest of this century.

Source: National Post May 29, 2020 15:00 UTC