Sino-US relations appear to have entered a prolonged period of acute rivalry and growing hostility. The current crisis is the result of a long process of tensions building up. The showdown had been widely expected by both sides for quite a long time, in spite of numerous attempts to avoid or postpone it. For example, available information about Chinese military planning shows that the security establishment has been looking at the United States as the primary source of military threats since the Chinese Belgrade embassy bombing and that this event led to the launching of the ambitious 995 Program—a large and costly national project of fast development of certain key defense-related technologies supervised directly by the top leadership. Still there were expectations that the conflict could be averted for a long time, possibly even avoided, if stability in the bilateral relationship were maintained for long enough for the internal changes within China or the US to make the conflict unlikely.

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