The label ‘‘New Cold War’’ applied to the growing confrontation bet­ween the United States (US) and China is a term that hides more than it illuminates, especially when it implies a fundamental similarity in the character of major state rivalries in the post-World War II period from 1945 to 1989–91—a conjuncture shaped by the geoeconomics and geopolitics of that time—and the emerging world order today. There is in fact a profound difference between the former era and the present one.

What existed then was a systemic rivalry between two incompatible orders that had profoundly different dynamics of social and economic reproduction ­expressing itself in an enduring clash of geopolitical ambitions and practices. This incompatibility was widely recognised giving rise to a sustained ideological hostility. The specific features of that global conjuncture were as follows.