US-China competition can avoid confrontation

In announcing he will meet with his Chinese counterpart this week, US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said competition does not necessarily mean hostility. That statement deserves heeding by some of his colleagues in the Donald Trump administration.

There is a rough consensus in Beijing that the present turn in the China strategy of the United States is not entirely of the US president's making. But that does not alter the fact that Trump seems willing to see how the scheme that his strategists have come up with plays out.

In a flip to the ping-pong diplomacy that aimed to isolate the former Soviet Union, Washington has not only labeled China as the foremost rival of the US, it is also seeking to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow.