On November 29, 2017, American scholar Peter Hays Gries visited the SIAS and gave a lecture on how China and the US could escape the “Thucydides Trap”. Professor Gries is Director of the Manchester China Institute and Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Manchester. He founded and directed the Sino-American Security Dialogue (SASD) from 2002 to 2008. In 2007, he co-founded the US-China Diplomatic Dialogue (USCDD), an annual track 1.5 dialogue for mid-career US and China diplomats. Professor Gries studies political psychology of international relations, with a focus on Chinese and American foreign policy. 

The lecture centers on “Escaping the ‘Thucydides Trap’: How subjective perceptions of a US-China power transition shape inter-group mis/trust and emotions, and American China policy preferences, An experimental analysis”. Professor Gries noted that the shift in the balance of power between the rising power and the established power did not necessarily lead to conflict, instead, the biggest destabilizing factor was the fear of each other. Though nowadays China and the US are highly interdependent in a number of areas, the possibility of conflict between the two countries, even if quite low, still exists. Therefore, the two sides should abandon zero-sum thinking and expand common interest to build mutual trust and escape the “Thucydides Trap”.