You can't separate trade and economics from military matters though. Its a huge reason why China is potentially a bigger threat than the USSR ever was. The USSR piggybacked on its military dominance at the end of WWII and the fact that the Germans had cleared the board of any rivals to the west. It then traded that initial dominance (and subsequent control over Eastern Europe) into four decades of dick waving at the West (which was backed by the unassailable by conventional means USA) but it did so at an enormous cost with at one point I think something like 20% or so of their GNP going to the military. This was unsustainable in the long run and hamstrung their economy in addition to the fact that they were still trying to be communist. So the whole thing came crashing down when a 3rd world war never eventuated. Their retarded economic clout limited their ability to project power overseas, find allies and ironically, maintain their military edge and stopped them from being a genuine threat to the West short of a shooting war, the West could always ramp up its military in any case to meet them.
China is a very different beast. After their civil war they had virtually unopposed control of all their territories with no industrialised foreign aggressors willing or able to threaten them so their military could be simple and cheap and they didn't need to dominate neighbouring regions. So they started off without a legacy of sustaining a fuck huge modern military hanging around their necks guiding them in one direction.
With the lesson of the USSR hanging around post-1991 they've cheerfully thrown away any aspects of communism that got in the way of economic progress and kept any that don't interfere too much but that help them maintain internal control. They've taken advantage of the safespace the WTO entry conditions carved out for them to develop economically with less limitations and translated that into using their market clout and the greed/fear of foreign corporations and governments to flex influence overseas in a way the USSR never could except through its infiltration of tertiary education systems (the Chinese are doing that too now). Do something the CCP doesn't like? "oh there's some problems with your 'product x' you can't sell it here" and watch as corporate types and re-election desperate Western politicians with their eyes on jobs and revenues fall over themselves to please.
They've managed to turn their initial safespace and now market power (under an internal authoritarian regime) into a sort of economic invulnerability that allows them to do whatever the fuck they want without consequences. Stuff that would have other countries hauled before the WTO and forced by economic necessity to retract by groups of likeminded trading partners. But China can just steal technology, raise bullshit trade barriers and offer direct government support in propping up its own companies and even attacking rival foreign ones. Their resultant wealth is currently being turned into an advanced military designed not to necessarily defeat the USA (it would be nukes before that was a risk) but to defeat the neighbouring countries.
Short of WW3 (or a collapse of CCP authority enabling it) the USA is not going to land troops in China and vice versa is true. So any military conflict is going to be fought over and around the neighbouring countries and sea regions. Without these the USA would find it incredibly difficult to contain Chinese international influence as the removal of neighbouring threats would allow the Chinese to focus on maritime projection power. This military power would be allied with China's economic coercion and influence and propped up by Soviet style infiltration of tertiary education and Chinas new forays into social media (tiktok being a prominent example).
In short the Chinese will use military threats and economic coercion to break away Americas allies in the Asia Pacific and eliminate them as a military threat and then break any chains that hold them back from being a global economic hegemon or at least a co-hegemon. A hegemon run by an authoritarian regime that can bully foreign markets into compliance with no peer rival but the USA and brimng wealth into China despite any structural problems it may have. Its a matter of survival for the Chinese Communist Party because the long easy boom as they caught up with the West is over and an economic recession or collapse directly threatens their raison d'etre for remaining in power (now that Communist ideology isn't viable) and THAT is the one biggest thing that the USA can do to them. It can use its global maritime reach and influence to simply cut off the trade routes to China if it wanted to break the rules and do so. Or if it came to a shooting war.
Its the sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the CCP. The Chinese need to become immune to blockade and need to break the USA's dominance of the world economy and replace it at least with a co-dominance. An authoritarian China probably believes it could better leverage that position than a free (and fairly benign) USA has. But to accomplish this China first has to avoid a war with the USA until it can neutralise its neighbours, preferably into inaction whilst it pursues its economic influence.
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The best thing the USA can do (avoiding war but still defeating China) is to contain them (economically AND militarily) with an alliance system. Which is kind of what the USA has been doing but something even more solid would be even better. Its just kind of difficult for individual countries to do without the Chinese economic coercion biting, only the USA and in some ways the EU (but not really) are strong enough to get into a pissing match with the Chinese without taking heavy finanacial losses. It needs an already existing framework OR a united effort
For all the attacks on Obamas Trans-Pacific Partnership efforts (it was led by the globalists afterall) it has the kernal of a good idea at its heart. A trans-Pacific or Asian free trade zone could be a significant carrot to allay any fears of Chinese retaliation for a parallel military alliance. It could help avoid the Chinese trying to break the group by targeting individual members who could act secure in the knowledge that Chinese economic retaliation against them would be responded to by the whole group.
Trump signing free trade deals with Japan and South Korea helps to tie them even more militarily to the USA but each still has to make any decision worrying about who else will be joining the bandwagon. South Korea has the Norks to worry about and Japan has a pacifist constitution to get over. These obstacles are less troublesome with the comfort of group action and common defence backing you up.
Basically I think a formalised Pacific Alliance with an accompanying economic component involving the USA, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and preferably Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Philipines, Cambodia and New Zealand to a lesser or greater extent would be ideal.