Uneasy Calm: Ryan Hass on Three Pathways for U.S.-China Relations Under Trump

This week on Sinica, I speak with Ryan Hass, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings and one of the most clear-eyed analysts of the U.S.-China relationship working today. Ryan was director for China at the NSC during the Obama Administration.

As Donald Trump moves through his second year in office, the bilateral relationship has defied easy characterization. The once-dominant language of great power competition has receded, China hawks have been sidelined, and Trump’s personalistic approach—marked by praise for Xi Jinping and a willingness to bracket ideological disputes—represents a sharp departure from recent Washington orthodoxy.

Ryan has just published an essay laying out three plausible pathways for the relationship under Trump: a soft landing, a hard split, or what he considers most likely—a period of uneasy calm in which both sides seek stability not out of trust, but out of mutual constraint. We discuss Trump’s apparent strategy, the vibe shift in American attitudes, Beijing’s choice between managing Trump versus managing uncertainty, the critical importance of Xi’s planned April visit, and whether we’re headed toward genuine stabilization or just buying time before the next collision.

5:24 – Trump’s approach: respect for Xi, military deterrence, and the rare earths constraint

8:03 – The vibe shift and Trump’s “reptilian feel” for American exhaustion with confrontation

10:52 – Three scenarios: soft landing, hard split, or uneasy calm through mutual constraint

16:30 – Beijing’s bet: managing Trump versus managing whoever comes next

26:46 – Economic interdependence and why decoupling is like “separating egg whites from a scrambled egg”

37:12 – The April visit as a critical test: pageantry, protests, and what both sides are watching for

42:18 – Taiwan as the most dangerous variable and where theory meets practice

46:58 – Lack of institutional guardrails and the risks of Trump’s personalistic foreign policy

Paying it forward:

Audrye Wong (USC)

Recommendations:

Ryan: The Conscience of the Party: Hu Yaobang, China’s Communist Reformer by Robert Suettinger

Kaiser: The Last Cavalier (Le Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine) by Alexandre Dumas; Asia Society conversation with Lizzi Lee, Bert Hoffmann, and Gerard DiPippo on rebalancing China’s economy; Trivium China Podcast with Andrew Polk, Joe Peissel, Danny McMahon, and Cory Combs on capital expenditure headwinds

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