China’s Belt and Road Initiative in the Sino-US strategic rivalry: Implications and the main US response

Abstract

The Sino-US relations have faced an unprecedented challenge and deteriorated to the lowest point in 4 decades during the Trump presidency. The ongoing Sino-US strategic rivalry led to the speculation that the two giants would head into the “New Cold War”. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) also becomes a main target of this strategic rivalry. This article offers the strategic analysis of China’s BRI from the US perspective at different levels, focusing on the changing role of BRI and its implications among US think tanks during the Trump presidency. It also provides the policy recommendations from the US think tanks in responding the BRI challenge, emphasizing the Indo-Pacific strategy as the main counter-strategy towards the BRI, and finally reviewed both the Trump Administration’s and the Biden Administration’s main efforts in countering the BRI. The Biden Administration focuses on countering China as its foreign policy priority, particularly countering China’s BRI through variety of means as diplomatic coordination, democratic values, and the global infrastructure alternative made by the US-led Collective West. Thus, China’s BRI will be the major target in the US China policy-making in the long run.