Recalling that two years ago he had asked "that the greatest challenge we face in the 21st century is not China’s rise, but America’s decline. China’s rise so far has been peaceful, but can the United States’ decline be equally peaceful?", Retired PLA Senior Colonel Zhou Bo in the South China Morning Post (January 22) referred to competition with China. He said "In the era of great power competition, as defined by the US, if the two nations can only cooperate on a couple of things, such as climate change and crisis management, then we are effectively in a new cold war since America and the Soviet Union also managed sporadic cooperation on things such as eradicating smallpox and space exploration. Sadly, the two largest economies in the world cannot even agree on working together to address the Covid-19 pandemic." He said competition with China has bipartisan consensus in the US, but Biden "can save China-US relations from going into free fall" adding that Biden now "has a chance to change the country’s course".

(Comment: Retired Senior Colonel Zhou Bo is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Security and Strategy, Tsinghua University, and a China Forum expert.)