Top Chinese IR Scholar Suggests a Fourth US-China Communiqué Could Be Coming

Chinese scholar Zhao Hai and Harvard's Graham Allison floated the possibility at Davos

At Davos last week, something interesting emerged besides Trump’s lengthy speech on taking over Greenland and how the EU has been ungrateful to US protection. Chinese scholar Zhao Hai and Harvard Professor Graham Allison raised the idea of a potential fourth Communique between Beijing and Washington. I find it interesting. Zhao is the Director of International Political Studies at the National Institute for Global Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. I’ve included his latest assessment of China-US relations in last week's newsletter.

The three existing communiqués (1972, 1979, 1982) have governed the US-China relations for half a century. The Shanghai Communiqué of 1972 broke the ice during Nixon's visit, with Washington acknowledging (that’s the art of words) Beijing's position that Taiwan is part of China. The 1979 Joint Communiqué established formal diplomatic relations, with the US severing official ties with Taipei and recognizing the PRC as the sole legal government of China. The 1982 communiqué addressed arms sales to Taiwan, with Washington stating its intention to gradually reduce them—a commitment the US has repeatedly violated. Together, these documents form the diplomatic scaffolding that has kept the relationship functional, if not friendly, through decades of tension.

A fourth would be the most significant diplomatic document between the two powers in over forty years. The fact that this idea is being openly discussed at Davos, with scholars from both sides nodding along, may suggest some sort of consensus between policymakers. As for what the outcome will be, in Prof. Allison’s words, “that’s an area for creative work by people in the world of diplomacy.“

Dr. Zhao also pushed back on some claims about Taiwan. About recent drills, he argues that Beijing only responds when the separatist leadership in Taiwan tries to push forward their agenda. He also emphasized that the Taiwan issue is not comparable to the US kidnapping of Maduro or the transfer of Greenland because Taiwan has no sovereignty of its own. In the Philippines, the new government has torn up the agreement reached during the Duterte administration, and China needs to respond. On the AI topic, there’s strategic competition, but it doesn't have to be a zero-sum game.

Former Australian PM Kevin Rudd, freshly returned from his posting as ambassador to Washington, offered a blunter take. He warned of “unprecedented levels of Chinese self-confidence,” citing rhetoric about the rise of the East and decline of the West (东升西降). Still, Rudd argued that managed competition beats the alternative: “You can either have a management mechanism that reduces the risk of crisis, conflict, and war, or it’s like rolling the dice each morning and hoping it turns out okay by midnight.”

Senator Chris Coons of Delaware struck a more skeptical note. He listed ongoing friction points—the South China Sea, cyber issues, the fentanyl crisis—and warned that the two countries simply don’t talk enough. “There aren’t enough lines of communication between our militaries. There aren’t enough lines of understanding between our political leadership.”

Angela Zhang, a law professor focused on Chinese economic regulation, argued that Washington’s containment strategy has largely backfired, pointing to DeepSeek—a Chinese AI model developed under chip sanctions—as proof that pressure can accelerate rather than slow Chinese innovation. Her assessment of 2026 is cautiously optimistic. Both sides, she suggested, now understand each other’s choke points. That clarity, paradoxically, might be what keeps things stable.

Below is the transcript of the panel I made. Maybe WEF should consider making an official transcript next time rather than just a video.

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US and China: Where Will They Land?

Speakers: Christopher A. Coons, Angela Zhang Huyue, Graham Allison, Jaime Ho, Zhao Hai, The Hon. Dr Kevin Rudd

Jaime Ho: We have a very esteemed panel ahead of us this evening. Professor Allison, if you could give us a quick take on the President’s speech and how it applies to US-China relations?

Graham Allison: The speech went off in many different directions, as the President is inclined to do, but there was one big message for the Europeans in particular, and for all of us: after having threatened to do whatever was required to acquire Greenland—including using military force, even employing Mafioso language about doing this “the hard way or the easy way”—he took the gun off the table and said we’re not going to use military force to coerce Greenland or Denmark.

Now, it’s a pretty strange world in which an ally has been threatening to use military force against another ally, so that world we’re already in. That fact has already occurred. But the fact that he took it off the table is a significant factor.

Second, he made clear over and over that he is really serious about acquiring Greenland. He says Greenland is just a big chunk of ice, relevant for the US and not particularly relevant for Denmark or for the Greenlanders. He says it’s needed for American national security—myself, I could not see the argument for that, but that’s his claim. And he maintains that the Europeans have never been grateful to the US for all the things we’ve done for them. He has a litany about the fact—which is roughly correct—that the US has essentially been the defensive shield for Europe ever since World War II, and the Europeans have been free riders to some considerable extent. So they owe us something, and what they can do for us is give us Greenland.

Then he said, “I’m still thinking this is gonna work out okay,” and if the Europeans find a way to fulfill his demand, he’ll be grateful. But if they don’t, he’ll remember.

Jaime Ho: The thing that struck me, and I’m sure it struck you as well—and this segues back into our topic for this evening—is how little he mentioned China throughout the speech. In any case, let’s get back to the topic.

Graham Allison: One footnote on that. For those watching through a China lens, he only referred to three or four leaders in the whole speech. In the case of the Europeans—both Macron and the Canadian colleague Carney—he had very negative things to say, basically demeaning them. But when he said “Xi,” his eyes lit up a little and he said, “I have a great relationship with Xi. I greatly respect Xi. He’s brilliant.”

So he clearly distinguishes between Xi and his relationship with him, versus his relationship with a country and leader that happens to be our neighbor in Canada, or France, which was the country that came to our rescue in the revolution. That’s interesting as we’re trying to gauge him on his relationships with other leaders.

Jaime Ho: As we look to what will happen this year—2026—and maybe a little bit beyond, it’s quite striking that it’s now roughly nine years since your book on the Thucydides Trap. If we frame how things have evolved since then—the first Trump administration, the Biden administration, and now the second Trump administration—how have you seen the US-China dynamic evolve?

Graham Allison: I have a difficulty as a professor because we like to give fifty-minute soundbites. But let me be very brief: I would say Thucydides nailed it.

If we’re trying to think about the relationship between the US and China, his insight is the central starting point. That insight is that a rapidly rising China seriously threatens America as the colossal ruling power and its position at the top of every pecking order. This rapid shift in the seesaw of power is discombobulating the entire relationship—and actually the international order that was reflected before—in ways that magnify misunderstandings, multiply miscalculations, and amplify incidents or accidents that would otherwise be inconsequential, often ending in war.

His picture is still right. These are structural realities that Xi and Trump have to grapple with. The promising thing in this context is that Trump understands war is terrible—that’s a good thing for a president to understand. And nuclear war is really bad—that’s also a good thing for a president to understand. So we’re coming into a world in which two parties who can’t have a war that might destroy themselves will have to find some other way. That’s a promising start.

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Jaime Ho: Senator Coons, you’ve been in the Senate since 2010. You’ve seen how the relationship has evolved over the last ten to fifteen years. Give us a sense of where you think the road lies ahead. You’ve spoken about the need for both parties to coexist, to compete, but also to cooperate. Are you still optimistic that’s possible? And do you think there’s hope of bipartisan support for those three things?

Senator Christopher Coons: There is actually bipartisan support for clear-eyed engagement with China, strong support for our regional allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, and for taking the steps needed to further secure the United States and its position in the region.

Unfortunately, I think President Trump’s remarks tonight, his general approach, and his conduct of the last year pull in a different direction. The national security strategy does not correctly or clearly see China as it stands in relation to us and the world. And President Trump has made clear—tonight and over the last year—that he doesn’t have a fundamental appreciation for what has kept the United States strong, prosperous, and secure, and what has largely kept the peace in Europe for seventy-five years: a remarkable global network of allies who share core values and are committed to building out a global order based on territorial respect, self-determination, freedom of navigation, and rules of law.

Last year on Liberation Day, the President announced a chaotic mishmash of tariffs of wildly varying rates on all sorts of countries. I was in Taiwan not long before that, and the Philippines, and I’ve also visited with leaders in Korea and Japan around that time. Many of them were making major investments in United States manufacturing. Many were doing their best to demonstrate to the Trump administration their interest in closer alignment. And yet they were hit with thirty or forty or fifty percent tariffs and had trouble understanding why. We need more predictable, more clear policy.

President Trump believes strongly in national defense. He recently announced he intends to add another five hundred billion to our defense budget, believing that having the strongest military in the world will help keep the peace. I do think a robust military is important, but I think the soft power side of things—if I could quote a great professor—is also important.

When we hand away what has been a fifty-year advantage in our global leadership in public health, in education, in combating climate change, in protecting against pandemics—when we say we’re going to shut down USAID, cancel a lot of our core relationships—we create opportunities for others.

I do think there are opportunities for us to establish a framework to work with China. The most pressing issue for all of us is AI and how it will be used, both in a military context and in business. Understanding each other in a mature, balanced, and clear-eyed way is a critical part of advancing our security, as well as the region’s and the world’s.

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Jaime Ho: Professor Zhao, could you give us your own take on the speech, and how you think the Chinese government is evolving its thinking about President Trump’s approach—not just from this evening, but also regarding Venezuela, Greenland, and bearing in mind the meeting in April? What do you think would be a reasonable outcome?

Zhao Hai: That’s a lot to unpack. I don’t want to comment generally on President Trump’s speech—I want to focus on the part where he mentioned China. There were basically three times he mentioned China, and you can see that’s generally indicative of the problems between us.

The first time, he said there’s no wind farm in China, which is totally false. But you can take that as a symbol: there’s general misperception of China in the United States. Fewer people travel, less knowledge about China, particularly contemporary China.

The second time President Trump mentioned China, he basically said he wants to dominate AI and crypto, leaving China outside the game or keeping China down. So that’s the second problem: China believes in win-win cooperation, while the United States only believes in zero-sum outcomes.

And the third mention—if you look at it positively—President Trump praised President Xi and said he has a good relationship with him. But the question was: in which areas can the US and China cooperate? He stopped short of mentioning specifics. So other than personal claims of a close relationship, there’s no concrete agenda of cooperation.

I appreciate Senator Coons’s suggestion that we should establish a framework. That’s been President Xi’s suggestion from the very beginning: we need guidelines, we need a framework, and we also need mechanisms on every level to improve cooperation between the two countries.

Back to your final question about April: the world is focused on the April visit. Behind the scenes there are multiple connections—just yesterday the two economic teams had another talk. They’re preparing for April, and hopefully there will be concrete deliverables out of that meeting.

Right now, from China’s perspective, President Trump is very focused on domestic issues and is essentially expanding domestic issues into global issues—the Western Hemisphere, drugs, immigration, and all kinds of issues. For China, his demand is on fentanyl, and China’s willing to help, but we don’t know exactly where the boundary is or how China can provide more assistance. He also demands China to purchase more, but when China wants to invest in the US, there are still no parameters for exactly how China can invest like other countries.

There are many issues still on the table that need to be ironed out. But I think people’s hopes are up, because next year, other than April, there will be other opportunities for President Xi to visit the US, and also the G20 and APEC. Hopefully this continuous dialogue between the two top leaders will maintain at least the stability of the bilateral relationship, and on top of that, we can improve our strategic reassurance and build more trust.

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Jaime Ho: Ambassador Rudd, you have one of the most intriguing and varied experiences regarding US-China relations. Even sitting from where you are now—and by April you’ll probably be observing things from a different perch—can you give us your perspective on what would be a realistic outcome from April?

Kevin Rudd: I think the core challenge—to go to the points made by my colleagues—is whether a bilateral relationship management mechanism is possible, and what its framework would be.

You have option A: what I’ve called for a long time “managed strategic competition,” accepting the reality of that competition however uncomfortable it may sound politically in domestic audiences. Option B: unmanaged strategic competition, which can end in crisis, conflict, and war. Or option C: you stand back and wait for Graham’s Thucydidean logic to unfold with all its problematic consequences.

Looking at those general possibilities, what I sense—and this is me as a private scholar, not as ambassador in Washington—is that both sides have exhibited interest in stabilizing the relationship for different but partly overlapping reasons for the year ahead. I don’t think you can project beyond that, and each has different reasons for doing so.

That brings us down to the core terrain: how could you manage this, and on what issues? There are the three Ts: tariffs, technology, and Taiwan. If you’re going to get to the core of where these interests intersect or run into each other, what is possible on those three? I do not know. Both sides, including here in Davos, are working their way through at least the first two.

The attitude from Beijing—because this is the sound of two hands clapping, not one—is obviously relevant. What I see underneath the Chinese posture toward not only the April summit but US-China relations more generally is unprecedented levels of Chinese self-confidence. This is palpable when you read the internal Chinese literature. It’s transparent when you read the People’s Daily. It’s transparent in the theoretical literature the party engages in for its own code-language communications with itself: “dong sheng xi jiang”—the rise of the East and the decline of the West, a euphemism for the rise of China and the decline of the United States.

So while China is in search of a stabilization arrangement, it actually believes, in its own internal political literature, that it’s prevailing in its competition at present.

Given those overall dynamics, where does this land? That’s being determined by a combination of He Lifeng and Scott Bessent, who will be charged with the preparatory communications. That, I think, is the terrain for discussion and the options available.

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Jaime Ho: Angela, do you think we’re at a stage where there can be at least an agreement on a guiding framework for relations? Or is it just a case of working on things at a very tactical level—whether it’s TikTok or other issues—on a case-by-case basis?

Angela Zhang: I’m a law professor, so when you mention the word “agreements,” I have a natural instinct and reaction. When you look at a potential deal between two superpowers, it’s very different from a basic business contract.

Whether you want this kind of framework to be very broad or very vague, very detailed or concrete, it’s extremely difficult to write this contract in the first place. You may recall that during the first trade war in the first Trump administration, negotiations broke down precisely because the two sides did not agree on how to write a contract. And even if you have a framework, how do you realistically enforce it? There’s no third-party neutral arbiter that could adjudicate. You’d have to count on the parties themselves to self-enforce their commitment to this contract, and that’s extremely difficult for a superpower because of all sorts of unforeseen contingencies that can arise.

However, despite what I’ve said, I am optimistic. I agree with Kevin that at least this year, we should expect more stability between these two countries than a year ago. My optimism rests on three things.

First, Washington has started to gradually realize that the containment policy—this maximum pressure on China—hasn’t worked very well. From the first Trump administration in 2017 until now, America’s plan to slow down China hasn’t worked as expected. China has caught up very quickly. The technological gap has narrowed. If anything, it seems like containment efforts have accelerated China’s rise.

Second, thanks to the trade war and economic turmoil we had last year, the two countries now understand each other’s choke points. They understand each other better. That’s crucial because it eliminates a lot of uncertainty and eliminates miscalculation. They understand their own vulnerabilities as well as the other side’s strengths, and that contributes to stability.

Lastly, I don’t see either side having an appetite for instability because they have strong incentive compatibility. America is dealing with the midterm election; all eyes are on affordability and fighting inflation. China is still struggling with economic slowdown and wants to address deflation. One side wants cheaper imports, the other side wants more exports. There’s definitely room for cooperation there.

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Jaime Ho: So it would seem that the prospects of a longer-term landing point—which is our topic—may not be realistic. But what we may have is a series of small landing points, the lowest-hanging fruit, in terms of maintaining a degree of stability not just this year but beyond. Is that the approach you think both governments will take for at least the short term?

Graham Allison: In a word, I think yes. A “landing point” as if we had a permanent place to land is not likely. But I agree completely with my colleague that if you look at 2026, at Xi’s agenda and Trump’s agenda, and at the experiences they had in 2025—where Trump tried to crush China with 145 percent tariffs, attempting to bully someone he thought he could bully, only to find that Xi was not prepared to be bullied and tightened control of the supply line for rare earth products, threatening the American economy—the two parties recognized they are entangled in a way that requires them to find a way to work together.

In other strategic realms, that would be called mutual deterrence. Mutual deterrence, in which each can do significant harm to the other, has a certain stabilizing effect. Remember, it works because each is threatening to do something pretty horrible. It’s not a desirable state, but it’s more desirable than having confrontations. And it reflects more realism in Washington about China as essentially a full-scale economic peer.

You can hear criticism from people who don’t want to wake up to that reality, criticizing Trump for chickening out. “TACO” became a favorite acronym: Trump Always Chickens Out. But Trump doesn’t always chicken out. He only chickens out when confronting a stone wall or an equally serious opponent who can do as much damage to him as he can do to them.

Jaime Ho: Senator Coons, what’s your view?

Senator Christopher Coons: I think it’s important to stay clear-eyed that there are a significant number of tensions in the underlying relationship. Yes, we are economically very closely intertwined—more so than we’ve been with any other adversary. But increasingly aggressive PRC actions around the South China Sea are really compromising the sovereignty of regional partners of ours. There are more and more aggressive actions toward Taiwan—crossing the middle line, deploying all the way around, sending an entire armada around Australia. There’s been unprecedented infiltration of our communications systems, use of surveillance and other technologies to compromise security, cyber attacks, and the fentanyl mentioned earlier.

There’s a whole range of irritants in the relationship. I didn’t even mention decades of intellectual property theft. We’ve had a tense and difficult relationship partly because we have fundamentally different political systems and partly because we’ve been at different stages of development. We are now economic peers and increasingly security peers.

I am always mindful that Xi Jinping has directed the PLA to be ready to take Taiwan by force if necessary next year. The United States has invested a huge amount in modernizing military platforms specifically relevant to conflict in the Pacific. The PRC is engaged in massive modernization across every possible domain—from space to nuclear, to air, to naval—and we need to do more to avoid that conflict.

I don’t think we’ve deconflicted the possibility of accidents. When I was last flying over the South China Sea with Senator Ricketts on a bipartisan trip, it was clear there is constant tension and risk of misunderstandings and mistakes. There aren’t enough lines of communication between our militaries. There aren’t enough lines of understanding between our political leadership.

There is widespread grievance among Americans about the economic consequences for our middle class from globalization. Some of this is China’s fault, much of it is not. But it nonetheless drives a political narrative that means we are investing heavily both in trying to bring manufacturing back to the United States and in being prepared to win any conflict that may come.

We’ve got a lot of challenges if we’re going to try to find clear-eyed accommodation and lines of communication. The one that is most currently pressing is in the area Kevin mentioned: we’ve talked about tariffs, we’ve talked about Taiwan a bit, but technology and AI are fundamentally changing how our world works and how work is done.

If we’ve had a political earthquake in the United States because of globalization and the loss of middle-class jobs, AI is going to accelerate that dramatically. China has the advantages of energy, data, and talent that make them at least appear to be a competitor in AI. We have chip design and chip manufacturing. This makes Taiwan doubly important. As we race toward a world where AI is critical for everything—from commercial productivity to defense, intelligence, and surveillance—I support actions that restrict the speed with which China can take advantage of new AI models and technologies to threaten the United States and its core interests.

Therein lies a very difficult thing to manage with the PRC. And if President Trump hands away the partnerships we have built over decades with our allies and partners, I think we will live to regret it as a country.

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Jaime Ho: Professor Zhao, would you like to respond?

Zhao Hai: With all due respect, I wanted to talk about the whole story, because from the American perspective, China appears aggressive and assertive, but in many ways China has been challenged.

As you just recently visited Taiwan, you should know that Taiwan’s domestic political environment is worsening. There’s repression of freedom of speech and the arrest of people who dare to speak against the current ruling party within Taiwan. Chinese mainland response always comes after the pro-independence leadership in Taiwan tries to push forward a very radical agenda that threatens both US and Chinese security. I think we can create certain mechanisms and reach certain strategic reassurance to maintain peace and stability in the region—but the precondition is that we also need to keep an eye on what they’re doing within the island and stop them from trying to upset any possible agreement between us.

Regarding the Philippines, we had an agreement with the previous government. The new government basically tore up the agreement, and that’s why China has been moving forward trying to deter further aggression.

On AI specifically—this is not a zero-sum game for me. On the one hand, it may be strategic competition as the ambassador mentioned, but I think this is a common challenge. With the fast leap forward of AI power, and particularly with President Trump mentioning the construction of data centers, there will be AI that threatens the common security of humankind—not just leaving the US outside or China outside. At this particular moment, we should reestablish government-to-government and people-to-people talks on how to regulate AI, how to minimise its negative impact on both of our societies, and how to move forward with the constructive power of AI while properly controlling it.

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Kevin Rudd: A few quick observations. We Australians are naturally quiet and conservative.

One: I think we’ve become obsessed in the collective West with endpoints as opposed to management mechanisms on the way through. It’s a problem of Cartesian logic. We are drawn toward Kantian idealist solutions rather than how we manage the pragmatic world as we go. That’s the first point.

Second: if we look at the reality of US-China relations at the moment, we cannot mask the underlying fundamental differences in national interests that exist in the real world.

Number one—with due deference to Zhao Hai—Xi Jinping is not a status quo politician. Look at it domestically, look at it internationally: he wants to change the game.

Number two: in terms of US-China relations, what he wants in the Indo-Pacific is for China to have a balance of power that advantages China, rather than the current arrangements which advantage the United States.

Number three: he does want to take Taiwan. That’s clear. It’s in the party’s doctrines, in the political literature, every day and every week in the People’s Daily.

Number four: he wants to win the technology race against the United States. Read the internal literature—it’s very clear on that, particularly regarding the five to ten enabling technologies, of which the crown jewel is artificial intelligence.

And on top of all that, he would like to prevail in the foreign policy narrative across the world as being the responsible force for globalization, both in the Global South and more broadly.

The United States, with perhaps the exception of the last point, disagrees with each of those propositions—under administrations of both persuasions. That’s the strategic reality we’re dealing with.

So I go back to my proposition: endpoints, trying to achieve some magical consensus on these issues, will not happen. You can either have a management mechanism that reduces the risk of crisis, conflict, and war on the way through—anchored in deterrence, and from the Chinese lens perhaps mutual deterrence, but certainly from the US and allied perspective, deterrence to preserve the strategic status quo. You can have management mechanisms around core interests: the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and Taiwan, plus working out where you can collaborate and having no-holds-barred competition in the rest. And you can have a mechanism, a machinery, perhaps between He Lifeng and Scott Bessent—and perhaps adding their national security officials who have comparable status in both systems—to manage issues as they arise.

Otherwise, it’s like rolling the dice each morning and hoping it turns out okay by midnight.

Jaime Ho: Once upon a time, there was something called the Strategic and Economic Dialogue.

Kevin Rudd: I’m not talking about that because that became complete bullshit. It’s just true. It became so bloated—bigger than Ben-Hur. For these things to work, in Kissinger’s day—and many of us knew him—they were done narrowly with a core group of officials who were strategically empowered, capable of affecting decisions: two or three on each side. That is not a ten-thousand-strong strategic and economic dialogue that goes on for eternity.

Graham Allison: Let me underline one point. If you look at the period, as I’ve tried to study it, an essential element is that the two leaders have enough understanding of each other about the rivalry and its constraints. But that’s not sufficient. There need to be at least one or two levels of their assistants who are in continuous, candid, private conversations about potential misunderstandings.

Let me give a very good example from the Biden administration: Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi came to have a good enough communication network that whenever something was about to happen, they would talk about it in advance so they weren’t surprising each other—even discussing how it could be managed.

Look at the difference between the Pelosi visit to Taiwan—which was a reckless action, in my view, that produced a year of very bad relations—and the transit arrangement for President Lai. In the second case, the two governments privately talked in advance about how this could be disturbing to the two big leaders, understanding that for them, President Lai and Taiwan represents a threat that could produce an incident neither wants.

That’s called diplomacy. In a world that works well, that has been slow to develop in the current relationship.

Angela Zhang: I have a quick reaction to the other speakers. What I observe in US-China power dynamics is that they’re extremely fluid. One country’s strength can become its weakness, and the other country’s weakness can become its strength.

Take the example of the chip ban. Because of the ban, Chinese firms were not able to have access to abundant chips to train their models. But that actually forced them to become more innovative and more efficient. Hence the emergence of DeepSeek, which completely changed the technological landscape in China and brought back a lot of confidence for the Chinese economy.

Very recently, the Trump administration decided to relax controls on the H200 chip to China. Despite a lot of criticism in Washington—people saying, “Look, you’re selling nuclear weapons to the Chinese”—look at how China responded. The Chinese don’t seem very keen to buy these chips anymore.

So could you imagine a scenario where one day America actually wants China to buy chips, just like how we want China to buy soybeans? It’s not a joke.

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Jaime Ho: We have a lot of food for thought. Let me open up the floor to questions. When the mic comes to you, please identify yourselves and then address your questions.

Caixin Journalist: Thank you very much. I’m a journalist from China’s Caixin Media. In today’s panel, we’ve mentioned Taiwan so many times, but this afternoon in the Congress Hall, I think the focus was actually on Greenland.

My question is this: to what extent could the potential transfer of control or sovereignty of Greenland have a collateral or chain effect on the potential solution of the Taiwan issue? Or, following what Professor Allison has said—that if the two big countries do not have the voluntary intention to have a reconciliation with each other—would it be possible, during the remaining three years of Trump’s presidency, for Beijing and Washington to reach some kind of diplomatic understanding on Taiwan?

For example, Beijing would not block US efforts to relocate at least forty per cent of advanced chip manufacturing to the US domestically, but in exchange, the US would give Beijing an ultimate say on Taiwan’s political future—or at least allow Beijing to establish some guardrails for Taiwan’s political choices.

Jaime Ho: Who would you like to answer the question?

Caixin Journalist: Ambassador Rudd and the professors.

Jaime Ho: Maybe Professor Zhao first, and then you, Professor Allison.

Graham Allison: One thing is certain, at least for me: I have a game with one of my colleagues where there’s almost nothing you can say to me—”President Trump said this”—and I’ll respond, “It’s impossible. It’s inconceivable. This couldn’t have happened.” He’s very unpredictable and erratic. The spectrum goes from the floor to the sky. So anything is possible.

Secondly, I think both he and Xi appreciate that Taiwan is a potential flashpoint for something that matters deeply to both the US and China. That was a subject of conversation in the first term, about which they had some understanding, and I think it will continue to be a subject as they go forward. I believe they will see President Lai and his efforts to be as independent as he can be as a threat to both of them, and they will talk about it in something almost like those terms.

So I could see, before we’re done here, a fourth communiqué that would be much more constraining. What would be the potential outcome of that? I don’t know. I think that’s an area for creative work by people in the world of diplomacy.

Jaime Ho: Professor Zhao, a quick response so we can get another question.

Zhao Hai: Actually, Professor Allison just mentioned what I wanted to say—perhaps the best-case scenario is a fourth communiqué. But other than that, I want to set the record straight: Taiwan is part of China. So it’s not a question of whether China goes out there and “takes” Taiwan. It’s whether the pro-Taiwan independence forces want to separate Taiwan from China. That’s the precondition for China to use force—the only reason and the only thing that could initiate the use of the Anti-Secession Law. All the documents, all the historical documents, point to and guarantee that Taiwan is part of China in terms of unified sovereignty.

I want to emphasize this because whether it’s the idea of the US kidnapping President Maduro from Venezuela or the transfer of sovereignty of Greenland—none of that is comparable to the Taiwan issue. This is not a separate entity or separate sovereignty issue.

Jaime Ho: We’ve actually run out of time, so I’m going to ask for one last question—but please make it something each panellist can respond to briefly, since we only have about three minutes left.

Global Shapers Representative: I’m Han Singh from Global Shapers, New Delhi Hub. As a twenty-two-year-old student of economics interested in the Thucydides Trap and grand strategy, my question is this: in the nineteenth century, there were two powers that had the opportunity to be seen as peers to Britain, and only the US remained after the war. How do you see the analogy to the US in the context of the nineteenth century applying today? And—if you see where I’m coming from—what is your position on India, particularly in the context of India’s 2047 target and China’s 2049 target? This is a question for all of you.

Jaime Ho: Unfortunately, each panellist probably has about thirty seconds.

Graham Allison: This is a great subject and a long period to cover. I think it would be extremely interesting if India emerged as a serious third power, and that’s certainly conceivable. If it were to do so over the next decade or two, this would change the dynamics in interesting ways. Similarly, if Europe emerged as a powerful unified actor, that would again change the chessboard.

The reality we’ve seen, especially as President Trump has behaved as he has, is that the chessboard we’ve been accustomed to is no longer going to be the space for the future. If we go back to the nineteenth century, that’s an interesting case to think about—the rivalry between Great Britain and Germany—but at the same time, Russia was an extremely relevant power. It’s a good question, and it would be a good question for somebody who is twenty-two years old to think through, because there’s a lot of space for work on that.

Kevin Rudd: There’s a lot of talk—building on the question just asked—about spheres of influence, which derives from nineteenth-century logic. All I would say is this: for those who are somehow implicitly assuming that the United States, under administrations of either political persuasion, is walking away from the Indo-Pacific, read carefully the National Security Strategy. That’s the consensus position internally of the Trump administration. It is clear from that document that the United States intends to remain the dominant power in the Indo-Pacific.

By extension, one of the first meetings the Trump administration had after the inauguration twelve months ago was a Quad foreign ministers’ meeting. I was there—India, Japan, Australia, the United States—because this is seen as a core element in sustaining overall strategic balance in the wider region. Furthermore, in terms of India’s long-term role and its role within the Quad, notwithstanding the bilateral tariff issues between Delhi and Washington, India is of sustained strategic significance.

And very finally, on Taiwan and the Anti-Secession Law: yes, it is about Taiwan independence and independentists at one level, but its language also says that if insufficient measures are taken by Taiwan toward reunification, then military force is justifiable. That’s a subjective equation, not an objective declaration of a unilateral declaration of independence.

Which brings me back to deterrence. The way to sustain ultimate strategic stability in the Indo-Pacific—uncomfortable as it is in the ears of many—is to sustain the logic of deterrence and the reality of it, including on the Taiwan question, into the twenty-first century. And as Deng Xiaoping once said, allow these questions to be resolved in the fullness of time.

Jaime Ho: Professor Zhao, if I could let you conclude by answering the question or responding.

Zhao Hai: First, I want Ambassador Rudd to complete the sentence, because the sentence says, “when all peaceful hopes are depleted”—that’s when we would use military force.

Kevin Rudd: My point is that it’s not simply a statement that says “if Taiwan does a UDI.” It’s actually got other qualitative clauses.

Zhao Hai: There are conditions. That’s just the reality.

Kevin Rudd: Yes.

Zhao Hai: I didn’t say them all. But I want to turn back to India. First of all, India’s rise is assured in today’s world, and again, the phrase “rise of the East” includes India and many other developing countries—not just China. When India is rising and becoming a responsible major power in the world, I agree with the professor that this will change the power structure of the world for the better.

Because when BRICS countries are collectively rising and representing the whole Global South, I think that will change the global order and make it a better, fairer, and more inclusive order. And that’s what I believe both India and China wish for.

Jaime Ho: Angela?

Angela Zhang: I’ll be very brief because we’re running out of time. Professor Graham Allison’s book in 2017 had a provocative title: Destined for War. I would change that to summarise the theme of today’s talk: Destined for Peace in 2026.

Jaime Ho: Thank you very much. Can you top that?

Senator Christopher Coons: I’ll briefly agree that the rise of India is a critical part of the strategic landscape of this century. And I’ll agree that one area where there is urgency—for the United States, China, and many other countries—is coming up with a set of guardrails and plans for how to manage AI in a way that reduces the threats to all of humanity and unlocks its potential.

We need to find ways to stabilize our relationship and ensure peace and security. In my view, that’s been delivered for seventy-five years by a system and a set of rules. I do think Xi Jinping has pushed against those rules and that stability hard, and we have challenging work to do to restore some of those clear expectations about what contributes most to peace.

Jaime Ho: Graham, Senator Coons, Angela, Kevin, Zhao Hai—thank you so much for your time.