Is conflict between the US and China inevitable? Not if they talk to each other | South China Morning Post

Is China-US conflict inevitable? That question, long debated in academia, has burst into the real world. Since former US president Donald Trump launched the trade war against China in 2018, their bilateral ties have been in free fall, particularly with rising tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea . This has heightened concerns about the so-called Thucydides Trap, a theory surmising that a rising power and an existing power will inevitably come into conflict, leading to war. The risks of this were highlighted in the bombshell revelation this month that a top US general had held two secret phone…