By Kerry Brown
Since its establishment in 1949, the People’s Republic of China has lived comfortably in the shadow of powers that thought and acted as though they were the most powerful and important entities on earth. For its first four decades of existence, these were the U.S. and the USSR. Since the end of the Cold War, it has been the U.S. alone that has occupied the unipole position.
During the era of two superpowers, China was able to skillfully play the U.S. against the USSR through an elegant game of triangulation, shifting its allegiance from one to the other while they were largely preoccupied with trying to undermine each other and finding ways for China to assist them. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was as much a shock to China’s balancing act as it was to the sustainability of Communism. Yet China was subsequently able to continue harmoniously and humbly living in the shadow of the U.S., while remaining careful not to replace the USSR as America’s number one opponent.
Read the full story at The Diplomat