Abstract
Beginning in 2017, a policy of near full-spectrum US engagement with China that had lasted from 1972-2016 was replaced by one based on the principle of strategic competition. This chapter describes the evolution of US-China strategic competition during the first Trump (2017-20) and the Biden (2021-24) administrations. It establishes that the balance in bilateral relations between cooperation and conflict has been decidedly altered to one where conflict outweighs cooperation. US-China strategic competition is at once structural in nature and one of the defining aspects of contemporary world politics.