The strategic rivalry between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America is one of the dominant geopolitical trends of our time. Now, with the onset of the coronavirus crisis, the tone and stakes of this rivalry have been steadily intensifying. The game has changed, escalating from trade disputes to a battle over technology, ideology, and the shape of the global political order itself.
So how should we think about this clash between the world’s premier powers? And how will this contest resolve itself? Hawkish voices in both Washington and Beijing have spoken about the emergence of a new “Cold War”; former Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has even warned of the danger of armed conflict arising from tensions in the South China Sea.
Yet there are also reasons to be more circumspect – this contest does not entirely mirror the totalising standoff between the United States and Soviet Russia. Decades of economic integration between China and the West, a more multipolar geopolitical landscape, and new frontiers of cyber espionage all characterise a rather different sort of confrontation.
In the latest episode of The New World, I hosted Bruno Maçães, renowned voyager, political theorist and geopolitical strategist, to find out more. We discussed the US-China rivalry in the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis, and his recent book – The Dawn of Eurasia: On the Trail of the New World Order (Penguin, 2019).
Bruno joins the podcast from Lisbon. You can listen to the episode here:
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