Over a century ago, tangled alliances in Europe were tested with the onset of the First World War. Today, the converging interests of Asia’s middle powers, U.S. regional allies, and China in the South China Sea threaten to provide the world a redux.

The steady style of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden is a sharp contrast with that of the erratic Donald Trump, and so it’s likely that windows of opportunity will open in China-U.S. relations. Exactly how and in what fields improvement will come is anyone’s guess during the transition period.

The incoming Biden administration in the United States is unlikely to bring wholesale change to China-U.S. relations, especially in the realm of sci-tech. While some frictions will ease, Biden will attempt to patch up relations with America’s European allies to constrain China.

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has a wealth of political experience, unlike Donald Trump. A gradual return to more normal China-U.S. relations can be expected. But some aspects of Trumpism are likely to remain for some time.

China-U.S. relations will likely remain strained under incoming President Joe Biden though the style and some of the substance will change. While defending U.S. security partners in Asia and seeking change in many PRC economic policies, the new team seems interested in exploring opportunities for cooperating on public health, nonproliferation, and especially climate change, under John Kerry, the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate.

After waiting for the political dust to settle following the U.S. election, President Xi Jinping congratulated President-elect Joe Biden and revealed key expectations about China-U.S. relations going forward.

As the U.S. attempts to divide Chinese society, its suppression of industry, verbal attacks and ideological stigmatization all point at painful, challenging conundrums in China’s development and reforms.

Americans don’t agree on much of anything nowadays. Yet they are largely united in their belief that China represents an existential challenge to their country and the international order it has long led. This combination of internal division and external demonization has made the Sino-American rivalry increasingly inescapable – and potentially catastrophic.

Will a Biden presidency significantly shift the China-U.S. relationship in a different direction after four years of Trump’s tough trade policy?

Devising an effective strategy to compete, cooperate, and co-exist with China will be one of US President-elect Joe Biden’s toughest foreign-policy challenges. And over the next two months, Sino-American relations are almost certain to get worse.