Following the recent meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the media have generally focused on immediate transactional outcomes such as the extension of the trade truce, high-tech competition in artificial intelligence, and the geopolitical flashpoint of Taiwan.

For many years, Washington’s foreign policy status quo has mischaracterized the Chinese Communist Party as an ideological monolith hell-bent on spreading global Marxism. This misdiagnosis causes the United States to miscalculate its strategic response. Navigating this 21st-century undertaking requires confronting what China actually is: a centralized, nationalist dictatorship running a deeply integrated, state-directed market economy. China seeks to dominate the world economically.