Why a US-China G2 risks undermining a multipolar world

Under the Donald Trump presidency, the American approach to China has oscillated between coercion, balancing and occasional efforts at conditional cooperation. Contradictions in his strategic posture are puzzling. 

Washington has employed coercive geoeconomics and weaponised interdependence to discipline allies and adversaries. The United States has even experimented with a “reverse Kissinger” strategy to weaken the Chinese-Russian axis and restore US primacy. 

At the same time, it has tentatively embraced the G2 lexicon, implying an exclusive US-China hierarchy that normalises Beijing’s preeminence under the guise of global management.

Trump’s resurrection of the G2 idea – in a social media post before his October meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea – represents a regressive vision of order-building. It overlooks the diffusion of power defining the unfolding multipolar transition. 

Strategic autonomy

The G2 concept is exclusionary and constraining. The inherent limits of a big two framework make it a non-starter in a multipolar reality. It reduces emerging powers like India, which anchors its grand strategy on strategic autonomy and multipolarity, to peripheral actors. 

New Delhi has long advocated for a multipolar world with a multipolar Asia. India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar argued that in today’s political environment not all poles are the same size, and the United States and China hold more influence than other players. 

The G2 constrains the space for multipolarity and reinstates a hierarchical order that undercuts emerging powers. In turn this undermines the pluralistic foundations of Asian multilateralism. 

A unipolar Asia with an assertive China at the top will be problematic for neighbours with sovereignty and territorial disputes with Beijing.

It is unclear what the G2 framework – where Washington defers space to Beijing in Asia – would mean for Taiwan, the South and East China Seas or the fault lines along the Himalayas. 

While proponents argue that the G2 could stabilise global governance, it risks producing regional disorder. In short, it does not sit well with many traditional American allies. For instance, Japan faces complex security challenges with China.

It is unlikely to accept a China-centric Asian order. Post-war Japan has been the biggest beneficiary of the US-led hegemony. 

Japanese scholars have long cautioned against a G2, arguing that any arrangement accommodating Beijing’s “core interests” on Taiwan would be antithetical to its security.

Economic challenges

Still, the roots of a big two can be traced to economist C Fred Bergsten’s 2005 proposal for joint US-China leadership in managing economic challenges. This was refined when Zbigniew Brzezinski proposed a G2 to co-manage global issues following the 2008 financial crisis. 

Beijing presented its own version under Xi’s “New Type of Great Power Relations.” It came at a time when he pursued “The Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation.” 

A regional variant was also articulated through his Asia for Asians proposition. Yet a closer examination by Chinese academics on the G2 shows that it has been evolving alongside Beijing’s growing international stature. 

Back in 2010, leading thinkers like Yan Xuetong argued that the country had rejected the move since it did not believe that Washington would share global leadership with Beijing.

Now, there is a broad consensus that China has achieved great-power status. This has been accompanied by increasing confidence in its ability to move from a norm-taker to a norm-shaper and expand its strategic space. 

Yet the mainstream narrative casts the country as both a great power and a rising power – a G2 with Chinese characteristics. This demonstrates a tension between asserting peer status with the US and maintaining legitimacy as a champion of the Global South. 

Formalising a G2 arrangement remains contested in Beijing, given the risk of provoking comparisons to Cold War-style bipolarity.

Chinese scholars largely reject the big two formula and for some the Trump-Xi summit in South Korean has yielded the possibility of a tactical detente rather than a strategic reset. 

Policy shift

Meanwhile, the Chinese foreign ministry, responding to Trump’s G2 reference, emphasised that as the “largest developing country” and a member of the Global South, Beijing will stand for an “equal and orderly multipolar world.”

Washington’s strategic direction towards China under Trump 2.0 remains ambiguous, so this invocation of a big two framework on social media may be incidental rather than a decisive policy shift.

Still, adjusting to Trump’s evolving China strategy complicates policy choices in Asian capitals. It compels regional powers to navigate a fluid balance of power while recalibrating their roles in sustaining Indo-Pacific stability.

Titli Basu is an associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

This edited article is republished from East Asia Forum under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of China Factor.