The Chinese renaissance is one of the world's most significant factors of change. Will the reemergence of an ancient non-Western civilization be a disruptive force, or, at the opposite of a scenario which could evolve into confrontation, can the Middle Country and the West design in a genuinely cooperative relationship a new international order?
A third trajectory is in fact more probable than these two distinct developments. An essentially peaceful co-existence characterized by a mix of disputes, tensions but also negotiated agreements and varying levels of understanding could be the backdrop of the Sino-Western relations.
Despite its low probability the extreme scenario of a Sino-Western confrontation should not be totally ignored by the analysts. The West as much as China albeit for different reasons could be at the origin of such a sad course of events.
In reaction to the ongoing redistribution of power the West's most conservative forces could push for the containment of China with the objective of preserving Western unilateral dominance on the global affairs. Such a posture caused by the fear of a loss in a zero-sum game representation of the world would create an unnecessary divided global village and dangerously increase the risk of escalation between what would become a U.S.-China strategic rivalry.
In the event of China's severe and long-lasting economic difficulties some in Beijing could make a use of the nationalistic card to maintain social stability and domestic cohesiveness. But, despite the challenges it faces, the Chinese economy is still growing at more than 6,5% a year, while mass entrepreneurship, an innovative spirit and the globalization of the Chinese companies indicate that the world's most populous nation has entered a transition from a quantitative growth to a more qualitative and sustainable development.
Moreover, a more nationalistic tone in Beijing would not necessarily mean an aggressive China for history illustrates that neither militarism nor expansionism have been defining features of the Middle Country. In a Chinese context, nationalism could simply lead to a closing off behind new forms of Great Walls or Forbidden Cities.
If one takes long term history as a reference, China never really collapsed she merely closed herself off from her surroundings.
In another possible turn of events, it is China's resurging strength which could also be hypothetically at the source of Sino-Western antagonism. However, after what the country remembers as the 100 years of humiliation in the aftermath of the Opium Wars there is no alarming sign of a revengeful political narrative targeting the West or Japan across the Middle Country.
China did not attribute to others the responsibility for her painful marginalization following the Industrial Revolution, she identified her own internal weaknesses and reemerged not by putting the blame on external factors but by reforming herself.
In any discussion on the determinants of a logic of Sino-Western opposition, one has to take into consideration the fact that China keeps reaffirming her strategy of "peaceful rise". By doing so, Beijing recognizes the risks inherent to any significant rearrangement of power while it displays confidence in her capacity to wisely manage a process of change.
The Middle Country aims to be relevant but not dominant, her quest for centrality should not be mistaken for a martial mobilization for global hegemony or even leadership.
If an antagonistic scenario is highly improbable does it mean that cooperation will define the future of the Sino-Western relations?
On a series of crises, the West and China have shown indeed that they can enter productive collaboration (UN peacekeeping missions, the fight against nuclear proliferation and the specific 2015 Plan of Action for Iran nuclear program, counter terrorism, the COP 21 agreement on climate change) but while the two sides know how to cooperate when they have identified a common threat they also differ on the interpretation of a number of security and political issues.
NATO and China evolve on separate courses, and even if exchanges are taking place between the two, a cooperative articulation between the Western military alliance and the People's Liberation Army won't materialize in the foreseeable future.
While China and Russia are rapidly enriching their strategic partnership, the West has imposed sanctions on Moscow following the Russian annexation of Crimea.
A trust deficit already affects Sino-Western interactions in the security domain (neither the U.S. nor the EU can sell weapons to China and the territorial claims in the South China Sea are a source of disagreement) but, in the cyberspace, it is a strategic mistrust which complicates the Sino-American relations.
Since 1949 the PRC's and the Western political systems operate on different understanding of legitimacy and while post Maoist China is evolving into a governance in which the rule of law is becoming increasingly central, one should not expect the two systems to coincide.
Fundamentally, China behaves as a sovereign entity which has inherited the characteristics of a unique civilization. The present of the Chinese renaissance is not about an absolute rupture with the past but it is a balance between new forms of governance and ancient socio-political practices.
In a sense, one of the major real life counter-arguments to Francis Fukuyama's narrative on "the end of history" is the Chinese renaissance and its effects on the world system. Modernization, from a Chinese perspective, can not be synonymous with Westernization.
On the spectrum ranging from confrontation to cooperation, from the Huntingtonian "clash of civilizations" to "the end of history", the nuances and complexities of geopolitical co-existence will highly probably mark the Sino-Western relations.
The West and China won't agree on everything but they have enough in common to recognize that dialogue and negotiation are the instruments to reduce their divergence and enlarge their convergence.
In its strategic approach of China the West has to take into account the fact that through her long history the Middle Country has been through periods of openness to the world (the Tang and Song dynasties or the Ming dynasty of the Yongle Emperor) and periods of isolation.
The world benefits from an open China (the size of China's market, the Chinese creation of economic value across the continents, Sino-Western agreements to tackle threatening global issues), but for China periods of greatness were also periods of openness.
For the West, but also for the Chinese forces of progress the real danger to avoid is a Chinese return to a solitary course since it would initiate an era of de-globalization but also abort the promises of the Chinese renaissance.
It is in this context that the Western political and economic leaders have to act as catalysts for China's opening up. There are evident interactions between "gaige" - reform - and "kaifang" - opening up -, the two main themes of Deng Xiaoping's policy but it is the level of opening up which determines the nature and intensity of the reforms.
With the New Silk Road strategy, an unprecedented outward looking vision in the Chinese historical context, President Xi Jinping undermined the conservative forces which would prosper in proportion with China's disconnection from the world, he elevated Deng's policy of opening up and took the Middle Country even further away from her tendency of complacent isolationism.
By suspecting the motives of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), one of the New Silk Road's international financial supporting mechanisms, the U.S. misses an opportunity to accompany China in her opening up. Although it has been more responsive to Xi Jinping's diplomatic initiative, the European Union could certainly be more pro-active in the creation of synergies along the Afro-Eurasian axis.
In the 50s of the 20th century Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai put forward the notion of peaceful coexistence. In the 21st century, co-existence between the West and China has not only to be peaceful but can also be mutually transformative.
The forms that a mutually transformative coexistence can take are many but the European Union is certainly positioned to be an effective catalyst of China's opening up to the world while China is potentially a powerful catalyst for more European cohesiveness.
The digital revolution is impacting the dynamics of the Chinese society but digital China invites Europe to enter the digital age with a renewed ambition. The potential creation of value of the digital or the AI (Artificial Intelligence) technologies is unlimited and, as such, stands as an invitation to leave behind zero-sum game approaches and to enter dynamic interdependence.
China is at the dawn of a Great Entrepreneurship Revolution. In 2015, around 8 private companies have been established every minute in the Middle Country - 12 000 new companies registered per day. The connection between Western and Chinese private entrepreneurs which has to be supported and encouraged guarantees the continuation of China's opening up and creates new global economic but also social values.
Western modernity has positively contributed to the transformation of China but a metamorphosed and global China can take the world at another level of prosperity and human development.
If the notion of a peaceful coexistence prevented us to fall into a logic of confrontation, the dynamic concept of a mutually transformative coexistence takes us even closer to a logic of cooperation.
David Gosset is director of the Academia Sinica Europaea at CEIBS and founder of the Euro-China Forum. He has established the New Silk Road Initiative.