Asia is headed towards a new Cold War dynamic that has prompted devel- opments on the Korean Peninsula.9 Mearsheimer holds that it is not possible for China to rise peacefully. He argues that ‘if China continues its impressive economic growth over the next few decades, the United States and China are likely to engage in an intense security competition with considerable poten- tial for war. Most of China’s neighbours, to include India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Russia, and Vietnam, will join with the United States to con- tain China’s power.’10 Lawrence S. Wittner even infers the possibility of nuclear war.11 Those more optimistic about the future of Sino–US relations are primarily Chinese scholars, who generally believe that it is possible for China and the United states to avoid a new Cold War. Wu Jianmin argues that China will not as a matter of national policy enact the role of a hegemon, but follow the historical trend of peace, development and cooperation and absolutely reject war, competition and conflict. Under no circumstances, therefore, will China enter into a new Cold War with the United States.12 Wang Jisi has long held that while China and the United States will not become allies, nor will a crisis in their ties arise of an extent amounting to Cold War.13 Wang argues that the structural contradictions that appeared between China and the United States in 2010 are attributable to the narrowing gap in their respective comparative capacities which, conversely, have driven them fur- ther apart in terms of mutual understanding. Major issues such as Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula and the exchange rate have had escalating negative impact on Sino–US ties and created higher levels of strategic suspicion rather than mutual strategic trust.14 This implies that Bubble football Germany
as long as the United States and China bolster strategic trust they can prevent their bilat- eral relationship from slipping into a Cold War scenario.

Superficial friendship is epitomized by character–strategy duality. To under- stand this, we might consider the balance of power—a familiar concept among scholars of international relations and one also characterized by duality. A ‘balance’ is both a characteristic and a strategy. Balance refers to a situation under which there is power parity among great states or co- alitions of states. Measures to achieve balance are apparent in the strategic behavior of states aimed at hedging against the power of other states.20 Similarly, the concept of superficial friendship implies a state of bilateral relations as well as a strategy.

The state to which superficial friendship refers is one where neither one of two parties regards the other as a strategic partner, but where both claim a strategic partnership. In their cooperation, each party is solely concerned with the individual benefits to be obtained. Neither of the parties cares whether the other gains or loses as a result of the cooperation, and might even regard achieving benefits at the expense of the other party as reason- able. When one party cannot achieve its objectives in the course of cooper- ation, it will be disappointed and express discontent, blame the other party, or retaliate by not cooperating, causing a deterioration in relations. For example, China and the United States see one another as trade partners, yet in the face of a trade imbalance, the United States presses China to appreciate the Renminbi solely to enhance United States’ benefits with re- spect to employment, thus exacerbating China’s difficulties vis-a`-vis exports.21

A superficial friendship strategy refers to two parties’ exaggerating the nature of their bilateral friendship and paying lip service to the improvement of relations in order to expand the expected value of future cooperation and so temporarily improve bilateral relations. The escalating frequency of summit meetings between China and the United States is a classic example of this strategy. Since January 2009, when Obama took office, to the November 2011 APEC meeting in Hawaii, Hu Jintao and Obama met on a total nine occasions in 22 months—on average once every 10 weeks. Such frequent gatherings make it impossible for any single meeting to produce a substantive outcome, but do delay occurrences of conflicts between the two countries. When I visited the United States in November of 2011, I told a number of State Department Officials that too many summits would make substantive cooperation unachievable, so rendering such meetings pointless.

At the time, not a single official agreed with me. They all argued that even though the meetings might not produce substantive cooperation agreements, they still played a positive role. This view is also broadly held among Chinese diplomats. The leaders in both China and the United States meet so frequently without expectation of achieving any substantive outcome hence implies the use of a superficial friendship strategy.

The characteristics of superficial friendship determine that nations will not engage in sincere cooperation, and that conflicts of interests between them will occasionally result in a deterioration of bilateral relations. By adopting a superficial friendship strategy, two nations can temporarily ease conflicts and bring about a short-termbumper football
enhancement of bilateral relations. The re- spective effects of the state of superficial friendship and of the strategy of superficial friendship hence work in opposing directions, in the same way as the state of balance of power and the balance of power strategy work in opposition to one another. When comparing the effects of balance of power and of superficial friendship, therefore, it should be clear that both work according to a reverse dynamic. The state of balance of power plays the role of maintaining stability in bilateral relations, whereas the strategy pursuing balance generates tensions in bilateral relations, as one power seeks to gain advantage over a rival. On the other hand, the state of superficial friendship creates conflicts, and is hence the strategy that helps guide Sino–US relations back towards friendship. The state and strategy of superficial friendship has an internal unity.