Policymakers in the United States, China, and other Asian powers must choose whether to deal forthrightly and sensibly with the changing regional power distribution or avoid the hard decisions that China’s rise poses until the situation grows ever more polarized and dangerous.

As China continues its rise, many are left wondering what will come of the China-US relationship. Yu Sui explains the relevance of China’s “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” as well as new diplomatic principles, which may serve as a guide to the “new model of major-country relations.”

The question of Thucydides trap has become a classic in Sino-US relations to explain the rising military securitization. For the past five years China has attempted to develop state-of-the-art A2AD capabilities to secure its periphery, and the U.S. has called for a maritime version of NATO to ensure U.S. conventional offensive advantage over China. Trigkas argues the relevance of Thucydides today in teaching that we must utilize the creative forces of humans towards the Epicurian or the Confucian Good life and not towards supremacy.

I have watched carefully the evolution of China's concept of a "New Type of Great Power Relationship." This has been a core element of President Xi Jinping's foreign policy towards the United States. I am a strong supporter of this concept.

China has two key challenges in the years ahead. The first is to build a new, global rules-based system with the other major world power, the United States, that supplants the post-WWII order.

The “New Type of Great Power Relations” enables China to establish a code of conduct to protect its core interests, but the U.S. has not completely adopted it out of protection of its own geopolitical allies. For greater endorsement China should advance the interests of smaller nations in the Asia-Pacific, and the U.S. should move beyond its Cold War, realist mentality.

In Beijing on Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama called on China to be a "partner in underwriting the international order" instead of "undermining" it.

Asia's hitherto stable and peaceful strategic order faces pressure from the extraordinarily rapid shift in the distribution of wealth and power driven by Asia's, and especially China's, economic growth.

On October 24, 21 Asian nations signed a memorandum to form a new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, to be drawn on considerable Chinese funds. Behind the sc