While the Chinese economy is facing a slowdown, its impact cannot be predicted. Some argue the economic downturn is bound to carry effects across the globe, while others think it a mistake to fixate on GDP growth rates alone.

Despite the pause in the US-China trade war, the US and China are strategic competitors, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. China realizes that there is little room to settle long-term disputes and, as a result has shifted towards a strategy that focuses on sustaining growth at any cost, expanding alliances, and advancing its technology.

The Chinese economy is still going strong, though some changes are in order.

While excessive freedom for subnational governments can lead to instability, excessive control can choke off the local-level experimentation and competition that has long driven growth in China.

China should take advantage of this period of flux to restructure its economy.

Recent developments in the US-China relationship have influenced American perception towards China-- the fastest-growing economy in the world. Ultimately, the best defense against a rising China will be a rising and cooperative America.

China has made great strides in the past 40 years.

The Chinese Communist Party has lifted hundreds of millions of its citizens out of abject poverty to the equivalent of a Chinese middle class over the past 40 years – a truly remarkable and universally acknowledged feat.

The challenge for China is how to smoothly navigate through its issues, so as to create a favorable external environment for comprehensively deepening reform, to complete as planned the mission of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, to basically achieve modernization by the middle of this century, and to ultimately accomplish the mission of national reunification.