President Xi Jinping invokes HKS Professor Graham Allison’s “Thucydides Trap” in summit with President Trump

At the U.S.-China summit in Beijing, President Xi Jinping invoked “The Thucydides Trap.” The concept was coined by Graham Allison, the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government and a founding dean of Harvard Kennedy School. On Thursday, May 14, Xi asked President Donald Trump if their nations could “overcome the ‘Thucydides Trap’ and establish a new paradigm for relations between great powers.” 

Allison’s concept of the “Thucydides Trap” refers to the ancient Greek historian, Thucydides, who, in the late 5^th-century BCE, wrote History of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides suggested that war was inevitable because a rising Athens seriously threatened to displace a ruling power, Sparta. Allison traced this pattern across history, identifying 12 out of 16 rivalries between a rising and established power that ended in war. His concept has been influential in policymaking in the United States and worldwide. 

Allison applied his concept to the context of China and the United States in his 2017 book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’ Trap? He suggested that conflict was a risk—but not an inevitability—between the U.S. and China, even as China rapidly gains power. In commentary in advance of this summit, Allison declared that “both Xi and Trump realize that structurally, their two nations are destined to be the fiercest rivals in history."

Xi has referenced Allison’s term before. In a speech in Seattle in 2015, Xi said, “There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap.” And in an October 2023 meeting with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Xi said, “The ‘Thucydides’ Trap’ is not inevitable, and Planet Earth is vast enough to accommodate the respective development and common prosperity of China and the United States.” 

Xi’s reference to the Thucydides Trap comes as he emphasizes his country's stance on Taiwan. Taiwan is a self-governing democracy that China claims as its territory. The United States recognizes the People’s Republic of China as “the sole legal government of China,” maintaining unofficial relations with Taiwan as part of its longstanding strategic ambiguity. The United States has sold arms to Taiwan, and, according to the American Institute in Taiwan, a nonprofit under contract with the U.S. Department of State and staffed by government personnel, “the United States and Taiwan share similar values, deep commercial and economic links, and strong people-to-people ties.” 

In a social media post on Thursday, Mao Ning, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, wrote, “President Xi stressed to President Trump that the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations. If it is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability. Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy.”   

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