Athens to Washington: What is the ‘Thucydides Trap’ Chinese President Xi keeps invoking

Chinese President Xi Jinping, during his meeting with US President Donald Trump, revived discussion over the “Thucydides Trap,” an idea used to describe the tensions that can arise when a rising power challenges an established one.For Xi, the message is not that conflict between China and the US is inevitable. Rather, he has repeatedly used the concept to argue that the two countries must find a way to co-exist as China’s economic, technological and military power grows.Xi also raised the same idea when Trump visited China in May.What exactly is the Thucydides Trap?The term was popularised by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison in the early 2010s.