The chapters in this volume suggest characteristics of Chinese political culture and traditional diplomacy. With a new understanding of Chinese concepts of the world order, the authors have examined the emergence of CCP leaders like Li Dazhao, Mao Zedong, and Deng Xiaoping. All were individuals who thought eclectically about domestic and international issues. Their political and security concerns, unprecedented for national leaders in previous periods of modern Chinese history, were inspired not only by a heightened awareness of ideas transmitted to China from the West, including America, but also by robust traditions harking back to many centuries ago. Moreover, their vision and insight also grew out of active participation in international events of the period, often as actors. However, each generation of CCP leaders faced disharmonious factors and unstable elements in China as well as in the world.

Chinese leaders today face some similar international and domestic issues, which prompted early leaders to prioritize their security concerns, national defense, economic development, and domestic control in 1950. Although the international environment dramatically changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, China apparently replaces Russia as the primary challenge to the US and the post-Cold War world order. Certainly, the PRC is nothing like it was in 1950, but the CCP’s dominant leadership, continuing fear of insecurity (Fang 2021), and Xi Jinping’s call for the ‘fighting spirit’ against the United States carry on the party’s doctrine and Mao Zedong’s legacy as one of few Communist survivors, as well as a ‘beneficial participant’ in the Cold War (Xinhuanet 2021).

In the 2020s, Xi Jinping’s Cold War II may include a ‘strategic triangulation’ of China-US-Europe relations, in which Beijing can look for new bargaining room with Washington. In the coming new cold war, China will deter the US from waging a full-scale hot war with its ever-expanding nuclear arsenal, as well as newly developed cyber and space powers. Meanwhile, China has prepared a new battleground, in case of war with the US, in Africa, as America’s next quagmire, even though the Biden administration is being battered by the pandemic, climate catastrophes, and racial tension at home.

After Xi Jinping took office in 2012, his government sought an enhanced role on the geo-political stage while assuring the international community that the PRC would not pursue conventional policies of military and political hegemony. However, while China repositioned itself by creating a new ‘center of gravity’ in the Asia-Pacific region, its new demands faced new challenges and implications for its national security, foreign threats, and strategic environment. The disputed islands in the East and South China Seas are possible sources of international discontent and present increasingly sensitive issues over sovereignty. In April 2013, China released its annual Defense White Paper, titled ‘The Diversified Employment of China’s Armed Forces’. It clearly states that a strong national defense and powerful armed forces are strategically commensurate with China’s modernization, peaceful development, international standing, and security concerns. In short, China’s armed forces must meet the new requirement for its national development and security strategy (Information Office 2013).

In August 2013, Xi Jinping, chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), visited the aircraft carrier Liaoning, commenting that China should build an even stronger naval force (Huang and Ng 2013, 1–3). The PLA Navy (PLAN) expanded from a ‘coastal fleet’ in the 1980s to a ‘twenty-first century maritime power’ (Cole 2010, x).

From Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 to Barack Obama’s presidency in 2008–2016, relations between China and the United States were largely cordial, despite a few aberrations, like NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)’s bombardment of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, and the US-China Hainan plane collision incident in 2001. However, since 2018, US-China relations have deteriorated, and tensions have escalated due to trade, technology, and currency wars. In 2019, President Donald Trump signed bills supporting the Hong Kong protests and Taiwan, further exacerbating bilateral relations. As if tensions were not high enough, the sudden eruption of the Covid-19 pandemic in China and its spread to the US deepened the fissure between the two powers. In March 2019, China and the US fought tit-for-tat over journalists (Smith, 2020). In July, after China promulgated the Hong Kong Security Law, Trump ended Hong Kong’s special status. Diplomatic enmity reached a new high when both countries closed one of their consulates. On July 23, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, after repeated attacks and lambasting by Chinese state media as the ‘Common Human Enemy’ announced that the engagement policy started by Nixon had failed. In another speech, Pompeo called China the biggest threat to the US (Shesgreen 2020). Like Pompeo, Trump floated the idea of ‘decoupling’ the Chinese and American economies, a far cry from his stance just a few years earlier.

In 2020, Beijing launched a new, aggressive diplomatic campaign against the US, described by Western media as ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy. On March 21, 2021, top Chinese diplomats cited the US’s own human rights problems when they denounced the United States, at high-level China-US talks in Alaska, as ‘not qualified’ to lecture China on human rights. Washington also saw a sharp increase in 2021 of hostile responses to the Taiwan question from Beijing. The increased hostility in those statements included warnings that ‘China will “take all necessary measures” to safeguard its sovereignty and security’ (Dai and Luqiu 2021).