Dueling Hegemony: China’s BRI and America’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy

China’s rise is one of the most significant challenges to US influence in Asia and the world. Scholars have debated over the nature and effects of geopolitical rivalry between China and the United States, often predicting tumultuous relations between the two nations by drawing inferences from past hegemonic competition or current incompatible political systems.

Such alarming forecasts appear more realistic under the administration of Donald Trump. Along with the ongoing trade war with China, the Trump administration in its 2017 National Security Strategy document unmistakably called China a “strategic competitor.”