Despite outrage from U.S. foreign-policy elites, Secretary Tillerson has not been duped by the Chinese. The new model of great-power relations China is seeking is not empty propaganda. It does recognize Chinese leadership, but in a way that’s beneficial both to the United States and China. It does not make concessions to China by default, and it is not one-sided. Finally, far from signaling America’s decline in East and Southeast Asia, it shows that the United States is able to remain relevant even as Chinese power rises in the region.

The real danger in Secretary Tillerson’s acceptance of Xi’s new model is that the United States will treat the commitment as mere rhetoric and ignore the principles in reality. If this happens, then the likely outcome is disenchantment on the part of the Chinese. This would make conflict and confrontation more likely, even as it stymied regional and global cooperation. Such an outcome would be lose-lose, a bitter irony for two nations who just declared their objective to be the opposite.

Jared McKinney is a nonresident fellow at the Pangoal Institution (Beijing) and a PhD Student at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore).

Image: U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson addresses media in Beijing. Flickr/U.S. Department of State