Political scientist Yan Xuetong predicts Beijing will be on ‘equal footing’ in strategic rivalry with Washington in the post-Trump era
The United States is likely to lose its clear edge over China in strategic relations with major nations by 2035, a prominent Chinese political scientist has predicted.
Yan Xuetong, honorary dean of Tsinghua University’s Institute of International Relations, said strategic competition between Beijing and Washington was likely to remain intense in the coming decade and could escalate into a crisis during US President Donald Trump’s second term, but the risk of direct war could decline under subsequent administrations.
In his book Inflection of History: International Configuration and Order 2025-2035, published last month, Yan argues that China and the US are the only two superpowers and will continue to outpace other major countries during the second Trump administration and beyond.
“By 2035, issue-based side-picking between China and the US is likely to become a normalised international phenomenon,” the book states.
By that time, China’s strategic relationships with Brazil and Russia will be stronger than those countries’ ties with the US, while Germany and France will pursue a path of relative neutrality, hedging between the two powers, according to Yan.
He predicted that although India, Japan and Britain would maintain stronger strategic ties with the US than with China, they were expected to be less proactive about taking part in Washington’s containment of Beijing.
“The US will lose its clear advantage over China in strategic relations with major powers,” Yan wrote. “At that point, the US may lose its international dominance.”
According to Yan, most major nations are likely to have deeper economic cooperation with China than with the US, and while Washington is expected to maintain a larger network of security partners than Beijing, the two countries’ political influence will be comparable.
The new book coincides with debate over how the Trump administration’s “America first” agenda might affect the global order, especially following several recent flashpoints: the US abduction of former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife, the US president’s ramped-up talk of taking over Greenland while threatening European allies, and his increasingly hardline posture towards Iran.
There has also been growing attention to how the White House’s foreign policy approach, highlighted in its National Security Strategy last month, could shape the trajectory of China-US competition.
Both countries have been working to keep the peace ahead of possible reciprocal visits by Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The US leader has said he accepted an invitation to visit China in April.
Yan expressed caution about the view that China-US relations would stabilise or improve following a potential Beijing visit by Trump.
“Personally, I am not that optimistic,” he said during a book launch event in Beijing last Tuesday.
Recalling that Trump launched the trade war in early 2018, shortly after his trip to China in November 2017, Yan noted that it was difficult to guarantee the US leader would not repeat that pattern after a potential visit this year.
He added that he had seen no signs of a trade war “truce” emerging from the leaders’ October summit in Busan, South Korea.
Yan noted that both sides had only postponed across-the-board tariff increases and agreed to prevent competition from escalating into war, but confrontations continued in other areas of trade and technology.
In his book, Yan estimated that the second Trump administration could end with heightened China-US friction, with fewer than 20 official dialogue channels. The number was more than 100 at the start of Trump’s first term.
He warned that Trump’s “mafia-style extortion tactics” could risk escalating the economic competition into military conflict during the US leader’s four-year stint.
Yan predicted that by 2035, the gap in comprehensive national strength between China and the US could narrow significantly, forcing future American administrations to return to a trajectory of managed economic competition.
“Strategic competition between China and the US may remain intense after the end of the second Trump term, but the two countries may have established new mechanisms for managing competition, creating a long-term, stable and war-free state of competition,” he wrote.
According to Yan, China could narrow the gap with the US in overall national strength in the coming decade, but a comprehensive overtaking remains unlikely.
“I think that by 2035, we will be competing on equal footing with the US. The possibility of surpassing the US is still not there,” he said at the book event, adding that China still faced significant gaps in fields such as the military, basic scientific research and higher education that would be challenging to bridge in just 10 years.
Still, Yan said China might outperform the US in specific technologies a decade from now.
