Towards responsible competition with China

The announcement that Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping meet at a virtual summit before the end of the year has raised the possibility that Washington and Beijing may begin to put in place safeguards to prevent U.S.-Chinese competition from fall into outright conflict. Despite the emphasis Bidens placed in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly that the United States is not seeking a new cold war or a world divided into rigid blocs and Xis declaration that disputes should be dealt with through dialogue and cooperation, the intensification of rivalry between the two states has been very…