By Nirmal P Acharya Ancient China was a master at playing strategy. Contemporary China is engaged in a strategic game with the US. If you haven't noticed, China may have a strategy to "avoid a hot war". China has conflicts with many countries besides the US. There is a game of interest between China and its neighbors, such as India, Myanmar, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, etc. Internally, China is also facing the severe and urgent problem of "Taiwan independence". Although China is absolutely capable of war to recover Taiwan, it has been slow to fire. Externally, although the Philippines' old and shabby small vessels have been ramming into China's tall and armed coast guard vessels for years, China has not opened fire and only responded with the means of the cold weapons era, such as using water cannons and sticks. There have been several violent clashes between India and China in recent years, with deaths on both sides, but no shots have been fired. Something more interesting is happening between China and Vietnam. On August 5, Cambodia and China announced the start of construction of the Chinese-built Funan Canal in Cambodia. With a total length of more than 180 kilometers, 100 meters wide and 5.4 meters deep, the canal is expected to be completed in 2028, with a total investment of 1.7 billion dollars from China. At the same time, China will undertake the expansion project of Sihanoukville Port. This is seen as China's response to Vietnam's efforts to internationalize its dispute with China in the South China Sea and to conduct joint military exercises with the Philippines. Of course, the most complex and frightening game is definitely between China and the US. Two years ago, the then Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi insisted on visiting Taiwan, which crossed China's bottom line. China issued a stern warning. The whole world is staring to see if China dares to shoot down Pelosi's plane. In full view of the public, Pelosi's plane landed safely in Taiwan and flew safely out of Taiwan. At the time, Chinese policymakers were ridiculed from inside and outside for not firing directly, as some had expected and were seen as conceding. However, two years later, shocking news slowly came out. At that time, the US plotted to use Pelosi's visit to Taiwan to attract the world's attention and entice China to go all out in the Taiwan Strait and then carried out an earth-shattering beheading operation in Northeast Asia by surprise. Instead of firing, however, the Chinese launched a textbook electronic war of surprise, disabling the navigation system of Pelosi's plane and forcing it to follow the navigation signals replaced by the Chinese, resulting in a vagrancy course. This stunned President Biden, who had to call off the beheading at the last minute. My personal feeling is that China, as the world's most powerful industrial country, is competing with a deindustrialized US. China has great confidence in its own war capability. This confidence is so great that China believes it can achieve its strategic goal of challenging American hegemony without a hot war. The cards in China's hands have crushing manufacturing advantages, crushing infrastructure advantages, and strong scientific and technological strength. Of course, the Sino-US game will also play out in Nepal. The US can now be seen playing its cards with the MCC as part of its Indo-Pacific Strategy. After the coup in Bangladesh, to ensure its presence in the south theoretically to disrupt China's trade, the US will go hard after Nepal and push the SPP. This time even India is on high alert after they staunchly refused the US to allow a foreign military base in the Andaman Strait and a pro-India government in Bangladesh has been replaced by a pro-Pakistan regime. It remains to be seen what cards China will play in response.