The US–China Strategic and Economic Dialogue as a format of bilateral cooperation between the two largest economies in the world was established in 2009 as a result of high-level talks between the leaders of the US and China. It has not only economic dimensions, but also an evident political one too. A wide range of issues is discussed, including those related to security, geopolitics, and geo-strategy. The United States had planned to transform the dialogue into an instrument of implementation of the "G-2" strategy - the US and China as superpowers that determine the future world order. Thus, a US-Chinese tandem would be an alternative to a multipolar world order. Although China has refused this idea, the dialog still has this implicit dimension.
At present, China is the world's second largest economy after the United States. Serious disagreements between the countries in geopolitics and geo-economics remain. China and the United States oppose each other in the Pacific region (particularly in the South China Sea), in Afghanistan and Central Asia and in Africa, where there is a struggle between spheres of influence. Geo-economic competition also persists. Created in China last year, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has become one of the elements of an alternative to the global financial system that is orientated to the United States. The United States, in turn, through the creation of mechanisms for the Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic Partnerships, which does not include China and Russia, are trying to create a new global economic order in which it will be the US who determines the rules of the game.
At the same time, China and the United States are the main foreign trade partners. Economic interdependence (especially China's dependence on the American market) softens the conflict between the two countries. The US and China’s confrontation is not so sharp and geopolitically determined as the confrontation between Russia and the US. From a geopolitical point of view, China is part of the territory of the Eurasian Rimland, and has not strictly a continental identity, but a mixed geopolitical one. Therefore, China can afford to compromise with a thalassocratic pole, and some its projects even play against the interests of other Eurasian states. An example of such an initiative is the "New Silk Road" from China through Central Asia to Europe bypassing Russia.
