China and the United States are testing the limits of strategic coexistence. Taiwan remains the most dangerous fault line, while Beijing’s expanding economic and diplomatic footprint across the Middle East and Europe is reshaping assumptions about how China intends to exercise power.
Against this backdrop, GeoTrends speaks with Xiaoyu Lu, professor at the School of International Studies, Peking University, ahead of his participation in the Athens Democracy Forum, taking place in Athens from September 29 to October 1.
Professor Lu challenges some of the prevailing assumptions surrounding China: that confrontation with the United States is inevitable, that Beijing is working from a grand strategy for every region, or that its growing presence in the Middle East points towards replacing Washington. From Taiwan and the Gulf to Europe and Piraeus, he offers a distinctly Chinese reading of a geopolitical order under pressure.
— President Xi invoked the “Thucydides Trap” during President Trump’s visit to Beijing in May. This week, during his own visit to Washington, he returned to the idea, declaring that “the Thucydides Trap can be overcome.” At the same time, according to former CIA Director William Burns, Xi has instructed the military to be ready for a Taiwan invasion by 2027. Against this backdrop, is a clash between the two great powers inevitable?
Let me begin with what was actually said, because the phrase travels badly. President Xi did not describe China and the United States as Athens and Sparta. He asked whether the two countries could overcome the “Thucydides Trap” and build a new paradigm for relations between major powers.
That is a warning about a pattern. I would ask for some care with the word “invasion.” Greece, like every European country that has diplomatic relations with Beijing, recognises that there is “One China” and that Taiwan is part of it. What is at stake is how a question inside one country is resolved, and China’s declared preference has been peaceful reunification for decades.
A clash between the two great powers becomes possible only if an outside power decides to insert itself into that question. So the honest answer to “is it inevitable” is that it is entirely avoidable, and the decisive choice lies largely in Washington.
As for the date, 2027 is one in a long line. Admiral Davidson gave the U.S. Senate a “six-year” window in 2021, which produced 2027. General Minihan’s memo in early 2023 picked 2025, which has come and gone. Director Burns himself said, when he cited the 2027 readiness instruction, that this did not mean a decision to act had been taken. Forecasting a Chinese move on Taiwan has been a Washington cottage industry for a long time. I would not build a theory of inevitability on it.
— Moving south, China has significantly expanded its diplomatic and economic presence and influence in the Middle East. What are Beijing’s main strategic objectives in the Gulf and the Middle East in general?
I distrust the word “strategy” here. China does not have the habit of writing grand strategic papers for regions of the world. Dividing the map into zones and assigning objectives to each is a rather European way of thinking about power, and in some ways a Cold War one. Where Chinese planning is genuinely elaborate is at home: five-year plans, industrial policy, energy security.
China’s engagement with the Gulf grew out of that domestic agenda, as a relationship of demand and supply. Roughly two-fifths of China’s crude imports come from the Gulf states and Iraq. So, what Beijing wants from the region is what any large, fast-growing economy wants: stable energy supplies, open sea lanes, markets for its goods and its engineering, and no war in the neighbourhood of its suppliers.
The Saudi-Iran normalisation that China helped bring about in 2023 was about exactly that, lowering the temperature so that trade can continue.
— At the same time, the war in Iran has disrupted global trade and energy routes from the Gulf. China is being accused of supporting the Iranian regime. Is China seeking to become a political power in the Middle East?
Let us test the accusation against the numbers. Saudi Arabia is China’s second-largest crude supplier, Iraq its third; the UAE and Oman follow; Iranian oil, most of it moving through third countries, is a smaller share. China has also had defence cooperation with Saudi Arabia and the UAE for over a decade, which is a matter of public record. If buying oil and selling equipment count as “support,” then China supports every state on both shores of the Gulf, which is another way of saying that it takes no side.
That is, in fact, the position. China maintains relations with Iran, as it does with Israel and with the Gulf monarchies, and it said plainly that this war should not have happened, because a war anywhere in the Gulf hurts China. Chinese diplomacy this year went into the five-point initiative with Pakistan and into the ceasefire talks. As for becoming a “political power” in the region, if by that you mean picking a camp, I would ask why. China has workable relations with everyone.
— Following on from this, is China preparing to assume greater security responsibilities in the region and even replace the U.S.?
I would first ask what “security responsibilities” have meant in practice. The American record in the region since 2001 runs through Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Iran. These are hard lessons, and they were learned mostly at the expense of the region’s own people. Why would China volunteer to inherit that role and repeat it?
Chinese thinking about security in the Middle East is different in kind. It is about being present in the room where the region’s states talk to each other, as in the Saudi-Iran channel. China will protect its ships and its citizens, it has run anti-piracy escorts in the Gulf of Aden since 2008 and it is the largest contributor of peacekeepers among the permanent members of the Security Council. It will keep offering to mediate. But “replace the U.S.” assumes there is a throne worth sitting on. I am not sure there is.
— We are also observing a growing influence of China in Europe, mostly through trade. How does China view its developing strategy towards Europe?
I would be pleased if it were a strategy. What I observe is more incremental: China invests where it is welcome, trades where the market allows, and adjusts to whatever comes. In Europe this is often read as deliberate design and given the name “divide and rule.”
That reading tells us as much about Europe’s anxieties as about China’s intentions. There are two real dilemmas underneath. The first is the old Kissinger question: whom do you call? Trade is a Brussels competence, but investment screening, ports, telecoms and universities are national, so Beijing deals with twenty-seven capitals because that is where decisions are taken, not because it is trying to split them.
The second is structural and more serious: are the two economies still complementary? Last year the EU exported about 200 billion euros of goods to China against 560 billion of imports, and the exports are shrinking. Europe still sells China machinery, cars, medical instruments, pharmaceuticals and food, but machinery and cars are precisely where Chinese firms are catching up. Whether Europe is willing to remain an open market while its own industrial position changes is the real question. It is not one Beijing can answer for Europe.
— The Port of Piraeus in Athens became one of the most visible symbols of China’s economic presence in Europe after COSCO acquired a controlling stake in the port in 2016. How important are Piraeus and Greece, in general, to China’s European strategy today?
Following from what I said: no single country is so important to China that Beijing would build its whole European approach around it, and no country in Europe is small enough for China to ignore. Greece sits at an interesting point on that spectrum.
Piraeus is a success by any commercial measure, from well under a million containers a year when COSCO first arrived to more than five million at its peak. It is also a test case, watched in every European capital, of whether Chinese investment in infrastructure turns out to be a partnership or a liability. The Greek state remains the regulator, the workforce is Greek, and the port’s competitor are other European ports.
Greeks are better placed than I am to judge the balance. But if you ask what Greece means in Chinese eyes, I would not start with the port. Chinese intellectuals have thought about Greece for more than a century as the other ancient civilisation that produced philosophy, and a Chinese conversation about Athens and Sparta tends to end with Confucius and Mencius.
The two countries have run the Ancient Civilizations Forum since 2017, and a Centre of Chinese and Greek Ancient Civilizations opened in Athens in 2023. This is not decoration. When the Chinese leader chooses a Greek historian to frame the most consequential relationship in the world, it tells you how much of the Chinese conversation about the future is conducted through Greek concepts.