Sino-U.S. Power Play and the Qin Qi Conundrum

This book combines process tracing with original quantitative and qualitative analysis of U.S. and Chinese official discourse, legislation, and elite perspectives in order to trace the key turning points in Sino–U.S. relations since the 1970s.

Challenging the Thucydides Trap and Power Transition Theory, the book argues that war between China and the United States is not structurally inevitable. Instead, their relationship has been shaped—and often stabilized—by shifting mechanisms across different phases of power transition. It identifies three core stabilizers: Stability through Ambiguity, where uncertainty about intentions and capabilities delays containment; Mutually Assured Economic Destruction (MAED) / Reciprocal Vulnerability Interdependence (RVI), where asymmetric interdependence creates credible deterrence; and Order-Succession Rise, where a rising power inherits and adapts—rather than overturns—the existing order, as the status quo power seeks alternatives.

By integrating historical comparison with rigorous empirical evidence, it offers a theoretically innovative and globally generalizable account of power transition—one that explains how sustained stability is possible even amid intensifying great power competition. This book will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese politics, US politics, comparative politics, and international relations.

Taiyi Sun is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Christopher Newport University. He is the lead author of The Myth of War in the Taiwan Strait: Elite Perspectives from Beijing, Taipei, and Washington, amid the YiZhou Dilemma (Lexington 2025), the author of Disruptions as Opportunities: Governing Chinese Society with Interactive Authoritarianism (University of Michigan Press 2023), and is a co-editor and chapter author of Teaching Civic Engagement Globally, a book published by the American Political Science Association in 2021. His work has appeared in leading academic journals and publishers including International Relations, PS: Political Science & Politics, Politics and Society, the China Quarterly, China Information, Journal of Chinese Political Science, Journal of Contemporary China, Made in China, Contemporary American Review, Japan Studies, Routledge, University of Michigan Press, Australia National University Press, and World Scientific Reference.

Sun appears regularly on over a dozen domestic and international media outlets as a TV commentator, columnist, and expert analyst. He serves as the executive editor of the Global Forum of Chinese Political Scientists' main publication, Global China (海外看世界), and is the founder of a daily Mandarin-language political briefing, Inside the Beltway (华府圈). He received his Ph.D. from Boston University. Please visit his personal website for more details: www.taiyisun.com