"Neither Carrots nor Sticks Have Swayed China as Predicted"

"Nearly half a century since Nixon's first steps toward rapprochement, the record is increasingly clear that Washington once again put too much faith in its power to shape China's trajectory. All sides of the policy debate erred: free traders and financiers who foresaw inevitable and increasing openness in China, integrationists who argued that Beijing's ambitions would be tamed by greater interaction with the international community, and hawks who believed that China's power would be abated by perpetual American primacy."

In a 2018 Foreign Affairs article, Kurt M. Campbell and Ely Ratner write that since World War II "Chinese realities upset American expectations."