Is strained China-US relationship spiralling towards a Thucydides Trap scenario? - South China Morning Post

Ahead of this year's 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, we take a look at how the country is responding to three potential traps highlighted by President Xi Jinping in the past decade. In the second of a three-part series, we examine the Thucydides Trap and what it means for China's relations with the US.

When American scholars began talking about the Thucydides Trap - the seeming inevitability of confrontation between a rising power and a dominant one - about a decade ago, China's then vice-president, Xi Jinping, proposed "a new type of major power relations".

The US president at the time, Barack Obama, initially responded positively to Xi's vague and all-encompassing proposal, made during a 2012 visit to Washington and partly aimed at breaking free of such historical patterns.

By Shi Jiangtao. Click on the image below to go to the article.