🤝💻💊🤖U.S.-China Cooperation: Together We Prosper, Divided We Risk Destruction.
The relationship between the United States and China is often described as a contest for global supremacy. Artificial intelligence, semiconductors, biotechnology, medicine, manufacturing, energy, and national security have all become arenas of intense competition.
But there is a contradiction at the center of this rivalry: America and China are competing inside a system in which they remain deeply interconnected.
That makes the emerging U.S.-China confrontation fundamentally different from the Cold War.
In his September 2026 Washington Post column, Fareed Zakaria argues that decades of globalization have created extensive connections between the two economies. Supply chains, technology, capital, research, manufacturing, and markets have developed together to such an extent that completely separating them could carry enormous economic consequences.
The important question, therefore, may not be whether the United States and China can defeat one another economically.
It may be whether they can compete and coexist without damaging the systems on which both depend.
Technology Reveals the U.S.-China Paradox
Nowhere is this contradiction clearer than in technology.
Washington increasingly regards advanced technologies—including artificial intelligence and semiconductors—as national-security assets. China, meanwhile, is investing aggressively in AI, robotics, advanced manufacturing, clean energy, batteries, and other technologies it believes will shape the global economy.
This has encouraged both countries to reduce vulnerabilities.
The United States has restricted Chinese access to certain advanced semiconductor technologies, while China has strengthened its domestic technology capabilities and exercised control over strategically important materials.
Yet technological competition does not necessarily produce technological independence.
Modern innovation operates through international networks of researchers, manufacturers, suppliers, investors, software developers, universities, and customers. Attempting to divide this ecosystem into completely separate American and Chinese spheres could therefore create new costs even as it reduces certain security risks.
The challenge is determining which technological connections create dangerous dependencies and which create mutually beneficial economic value.
Medicine Shows How Deep the Relationship Goes
Pharmaceuticals provide an even more immediate example.
According to figures highlighted by Zakaria, roughly 41% of the key starting materials used in U.S.-approved medicines are solely sourced from China. He also cites FDA data showing that only about 9% of manufacturers supplying key pharmaceutical ingredients to the U.S. market were domestic, compared with approximately 22% in China and 44% in India.
These numbers illustrate an uncomfortable reality.
A geopolitical conflict involving China would not remain confined to diplomacy, tariffs, smartphones, or computer chips. Disruptions could eventually reach products directly connected to Americans’ everyday health.
That does not mean dependence should simply be accepted.
Critical medical supply chains deserve diversification precisely because excessive dependence on any single country creates vulnerability.
But diversification is different from complete economic separation.
The goal could be to develop additional sources of essential medicines and pharmaceutical ingredients while preserving international trade where it remains beneficial and secure.
Decoupling vs. De-Risking
This distinction is becoming increasingly important.
Decoupling implies substantially separating the U.S. and Chinese economies.
De-risking means identifying areas where dependence creates serious national-security or economic vulnerabilities and developing alternatives.
The second strategy acknowledges something the first can overlook: not every economic connection represents the same level of risk.
Advanced military technologies deserve different safeguards than consumer products. Critical medicines deserve different treatment from ordinary manufactured goods. Semiconductor supply chains may require stronger protections than industries where multiple alternative suppliers already exist.
A sustainable U.S.-China strategy therefore requires something more sophisticated than simply asking whether America should trade with China.
Policymakers must ask:
Where is dependence dangerous?
Where should supply chains be diversified?
Where should domestic production be strengthened?
And where does continued cooperation benefit both countries without creating unacceptable security risks?
From Interdependence to “Managed Interdependence”
Zakaria describes a possible middle ground as “managed interdependence.”
The concept rejects two extreme assumptions.
The first is the old globalization-era belief that economic integration would automatically eliminate geopolitical conflict.
Clearly, it did not.
The second is the emerging belief that geopolitical rivalry means economic connections between competitors must therefore disappear.
That may be equally unrealistic.
Managed interdependence instead recognizes that the United States and China can simultaneously be competitors, customers, suppliers, innovators, and strategic rivals.
Under such a framework, both countries would protect genuinely sensitive technologies and diversify critical supply chains while maintaining commercial and scientific connections that do not pose unacceptable security risks.
AI Could Make Separation Even More Complicated
Artificial intelligence adds another dimension to the relationship.
The United States remains home to many leading AI companies and research institutions, while China is rapidly developing its own AI ecosystem and emphasizing widespread industrial adoption.
Zakaria has previously noted that China’s AI strategy places significant emphasis on applying existing AI capabilities throughout industries such as logistics, health care, robotics, drones, and smart cities.
That competition could accelerate innovation on both sides.
But restrictions can also produce unintended consequences.
When one country blocks another from accessing strategically important technologies, the targeted country has a powerful incentive to develop domestic alternatives.
Competition can therefore weaken a rival in the short term while simultaneously encouraging that rival to become more technologically self-sufficient over the long term.
That is one reason U.S.-China technology policy requires careful distinctions between genuine security protections and restrictions whose economic consequences may outweigh their strategic benefits.
Coexistence Does Not Mean Friendship
The United States and China do not need to become political allies for coexistence to work.
Their governments disagree over security, trade, technology, political systems, Taiwan, military power, and the future of the international order.
Those disagreements are substantial.
But economic coexistence does not require political agreement.
Countries routinely cooperate in areas where their interests overlap while competing intensely elsewhere.
For Washington and Beijing, the objective may therefore be less about eliminating rivalry and more about preventing rivalry in one sector from automatically destroying cooperation in every other sector.
A semiconductor dispute should not necessarily become a pharmaceutical crisis.
A disagreement over AI should not automatically disrupt ordinary consumer trade.
And a military confrontation should not be allowed to emerge accidentally from an economic dispute.
Building boundaries between these areas could become one of the most important challenges in U.S.-China relations.
Coexistence or Co-Destruction?
The biggest danger may be treating interdependence itself as weakness.
After four decades of globalization, neither the United States nor China operates in economic isolation. Their industries exist inside a much larger international network involving Europe, India, Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, and dozens of other economies.
Trying to dismantle that system completely would not simply affect Washington and Beijing.
It could reshape global technology, medicine, manufacturing, investment, and trade.
