There are many possible outcomes to the Sino-American competition, from the United States ceding a sphere of influence to China, to mutual accommodation, to Chinese collapse, to a devastating global conflict.

In short, can Sino-American tensions lead to competitive coexistence? Or must this rivalry culminate in regime failure via the weakening or political evolution of the United States’ challenger? U.S. officials should certainly hope for the first outcome, but they should probably prepare for the second.

Why is a Chinese collapse possible, but not a US collapse?

Advocates of competitive coexistence believe the United States can eventually change the minds of Chinese leaders, convincing them not to seek regional preeminence and upset the U.S.-led international order in Asia and beyond. The hope is that if the United States demonstrates, over a period of years, that it can maintain a favorable balance of power in the Western Pacific, preserve its key economic and technological advantages, and rally overlapping state coalitions to uphold key rules and norms, then Beijing might adopt less bellicose (and self-defeating) policies.

Why does the US need to maintain a favorable balance of power in the Western Pacific? Why should there be a US-led international order in Asia?

The Chinese Communist Party may no longer be Marxist, but it hails from the same Leninist tradition that views strategic deception, obfuscation of intentions, and other artifices as essential tools of geopolitical rivalry.

Leninism is strategic deception and obfuscation of intentions?

Instead, rivalry could persist in a fairly intense form until the party loses its ability to prosecute it. This could come about due to either a decline in Chinese power or a fundamental change in the nature of the ruling regime.... In this case, competition would not be a relatively short bridge to a more stable, less hostile relationship but rather a longer bridge to the collapse of China’s power or transformation of its government.

Again, no question of the US backing off, declining in power, or collapsing itself.

According to this regime-failure theory, what will ultimately end the Sino-American competition is the accumulated effect of the profound internal stresses China faces combined with consistent external resistance. If the United States and its allies and partners are successful in checking China’s aggrandizement, then the combination of slowing economic growth, a growing debt bubble, a slow-motion demographic catastrophe, and other internal domestic stresses could lead to a marked decline in China’s ability to challenge the international order.

Pot, meet kettle.