Behind all the hype surrounding China’s changing global role in general, and the One Belt One Road concept and the BRI in particular, lie important and unanswered questions about America’s longer-term strategy for reshaping its relations with China and Asia more broadly.

China-US economic and trade relations should look beyond the 100-day plan. It will mutually benefit China and the US to deepen economic, industrial and trade cooperation, and push for closer and deeper cooperation in the high-tech markets, while gradually eliminating investment barriers.

US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi agreed to a 100-day plan for discussions on reducing the US trade deficit with China. It seemed to recognize that a stable US-China relationship is necessary to enable them to focus on their respective challenges.

With economic interdependence in the era of globalization, and determination by both sides to avoid the Thucydides Trap, it is debatable that the rising power will slide into an inevitable conflict with the established power. But China’s struggle to shift from a labor-intensive economy to one driven by technology and knowledge may make other “traps” irrelevant.

Why has there been such a tidal change in the U.S.-Russia-China strategic triangle? The reason is simple: the United States and China are deeply enmeshed over a broad spectrum of politico-economic relations. Russia, on the other hand, is a straight forward strategic competitor and, within the international economic order, by and large a natural resource exporter.

Despite preliminary pessimism, the Trump-Xi Summit showed greater trade pragmatism than initially expected, even though it was overshadowed by a raw display of U.S. military power.

On March 31, U.S. President Donald Trump signed two executive orders to review the reasons why United States has trade deficits with some of its trading partners. The U.S.-China trade deficit is certainly an important topic of the review.

In a February 24th speech, U.S. President Trump made his strategy for trade policy clear. The U.S. will negotiate bilateral, rather than regional or multilateral agreements, and favor U.S. producers rather than market forces. Trump’s approach to trade policy means radical change for the world’s longtime leader of efforts to reduce global trade barriers with trade agreements.

Last month, China commemorated the 20th anniversary of the death of Deng Xiaoping, the chief architect of the economic reform and opening up that catapulted the country to the top rungs of the global economic ladder. The anniversary comes at a time when economic openness is under threat, as the United States is now being led by a president who believes that the way to “make America great again” is to close it off from the world.

By the early 2020s, rivalry for innovation will accelerate between the U.S. and China. Ironically, the Trump White House has opted for a poor-economy industrial policy, whereas China has embraced a rich-economy policy.