Introduction

The United States and China are the world's two most influential nations. The nature and trajectory of their bilateral relationship will determine whether the twenty-first century is one of stability and relative peace or one of instability and tension—and presently their relationship is deteriorating. Washington, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, has replaced the post-1972 policy of engagement toward China with competition across a range of fronts, leading some to charge that a new Cold War is underway. This signals the end of the US's global preeminence and the onset of a more competitive and dangerous multipolar world. To complicate relations further, in early 2020, a systemic “black swan” phenomenon— the COVID-19 global pandemic—emerged, intersecting with, deepening, and intensifying US-China competition as both sought advantage amid the chaos.

The predominant narrative is that China's success in getting COVID-19 under control domestically, relative to the US, has empowered Beijing's rise. Here, a division in the literature exists with some claiming COVID-19 is a “reordering” or “epochal” moment—an inflection point of no return—that confirms China’s rise to superpower status. Others view it as an accelerant of existing trend lines that were already swinging against the US. This chapter relates to this debate by considering how COVID-19 has altered the relative US-China balance of power across traditional hard power metrics (economics, technology, military power, and alliances) and soft power metrics (the appeal of a nation's culture, political values, and foreign policies). While the traditional metrics of state power are open to criticism (the penultimate section of the chapter considers how COVID-19 has revealed weaknesses in traditional concepts) in an increasingly complex and multidimensional international system, word count considerations necessitate a manageable focus on this topic. Recent analyses also show US-China competition tracking along material power lines: the nature of their relationship is changing as the balance shifts between them. It has led China (like previous great powers) to expand its core interests and pursue calibrated revisionism. In turn, this is spurring a US response. Additionally, both the US and China are operating as if traditional metrics are critical to their security, prosperity, and prospects of “winning” their great power rivalry and shaping the 21st-century world order. External observers cannot simply ignore this fact.