Some people believe China and the United States will fall into a “Thucydides Trap” of devastating war, but I do not agree.

Thucydides famously attributed the Peloponnesian war to two causes: the rise of a new power and the fear that it creates in an established power. Most people focus on the first half of his statement, but the second is equally important. Both countries can avoid exaggerated fears that could create a new cold or hot war. In 1914, a rising Germany created fear in Britain, but Germany had already overtaken Britain by 1900. Even if China someday overtakes the US in total economic size, that will just be part of the equation. China is well behind the US on military and soft power indices.

As China’s power grows, many worry we are destined for war, but few consider an opposite danger. Rather than acting like a revolutionary power in the international order, China might decide to be a “free rider” like the US was in the 1930s. China may act too weakly rather than too strongly and refuse to contribute to an international order that it did not create.

China has benefited from the post 1945 international order. In the United Nations Security Council, China is one of the five countries with a veto power. China is now the second-largest founder of UN peacekeeping forces and participated in UN programs related to Ebola and climate change. China has also benefited greatly from economic institutions like the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund.

China has started its own Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and a Belt and Road Initiative of international infrastructure projects that some see as an alternative to the World Bank, but AIIB adheres to international rules and cooperates with the World Bank. In 2015, China helped develop new norms to deal with climate change. On the other hand, China has not practiced full reciprocity as a market economy, and China’s rejection of a 2016 Hague tribunal ruling regarding the South China Sea raised questions about whether China would treat its legal obligations a la carte (as the US has sometimes done).

Overall, China has not tried to overthrow but rather to increase its influence within the world order from which it benefits. It is not interested in kicking over the card table but in claiming a larger share of the winnings on the table. At the same time, China’s growing economic power will create problems for the US and the international order, and friction is likely over market access, forced technology transfer, state-directed industrial policies to support national champions, overcapacity, and coerced transfer of intellectual property.

As Chinese power grows, the American “liberal international order” will have to adapt. China has little interest in liberalism or American domination. Analysts would be wise to discard the terms “liberal” and “American” and think in terms of an “open and rules based” world order with institutional cooperation.

As China, India and other economies grow, the US share of the world economy will be less than it was at the beginning of this century, and the rise of other countries will make it more difficult to organize collective action to promote global public goods. But no other country – including China – is about to replace the US in terms of overall power resources in the next few decades. Russia is in demographic decline and heavily dependent on energy rather than technology exports; India and Brazil (each with a two trillion dollar economy) remain developing countries. Despite their alliance of convenience against the US, a real alliance similar to the Sino-Soviet alliance of the 1950s is unlikely. Since Nixon, China and the US have cooperated despite ideological differences, but cyber conflict and the interference in internal processes adds new burdens.

Rapid Asian economic growth has encouraged a horizontal power shift to the region, but Asia has its own internal balance of power. Chinese power is balanced by Japan, India, and Australia among others, and the US will remain crucial to that Asian balance of power. The US should reduce its fears that China can drive the US from the Western Pacific, much less dominate the world.

The more relevant question for both countries will be whether the US and China will develop attitudes that allow them to cooperate in producing global public goods, and that is far from clear. Yan Xuetong, a distinguished professor at Tsinghua University, has written that with the end of unipolarity and American hegemony, China will carefully avoid war and a “bipolar US-Chinese order will be shaped by fluid issue-specific alliances rather than rigid opposing blocs...[and] most states will adopt a two-track approach siding with the United States on some issues and China on others”. But such a future assumes careful management on both sides and no miscalculations. That will take skilled leadership on both sides.

The author is a professor at Harvard and author of the forthcoming book Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump.

The author contributed this article to China Watch exclusively. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.

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