Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday invoked the “Thucydides Trap” during his high-stakes bilateral meeting with US President Donald Trump in Beijing, using the term to underline the risks of growing rivalry between the world’s two largest powers and calling instead for cooperation over confrontation.

The meeting marked Trump’s second visit to China and his first in nine years, with the two leaders holding talks amid escalating geopolitical tensions, trade disputes, technology restrictions, and growing competition between Washington and Beijing.

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Opening the bilateral meeting, Xi framed the future of China-US relations as one of the defining questions of the current era.

“Whether China and the United States can transcend the so-called Thucydides Trap and create a new normalization of relations between major powers; whether we can join hands to address global challenges and inject greater stability into the world; whether we can advance the well-being of the peoples of our two countries and the future destiny of humanity, and jointly create a better future for bilateral relations,” Xi said in his opening remarks.

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The term “Thucydides Trap” has increasingly become part of the global conversation surrounding China-US relations, particularly under Xi’s leadership.

Simply put, the theory describes a dangerous situation in which an established global power becomes threatened by the rapid rise of another power, eventually pushing both sides toward confrontation or even war.

The phrase was popularised by American political scientist Graham Allison, who used it to analyse tensions between China and the United States. Allison borrowed the idea from ancient Greek historian Thucydides, who chronicled the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta over 2,000 years ago.

Thucydides famously wrote that it was “the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta” that made war inevitable. Over time, scholars and policymakers began using the analogy to describe modern power transitions - especially the rise of China against the backdrop of long-standing American dominance.

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