As tensions ratchet up between the U.S. and China over trade and security issues, many major news organizations around the globe have given a platform to commentators trumpeting the arrival of a new "cold war" between the world's two largest economic superpowers.
But former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd — a China specialist — thinks that such analysis is overblown.
"Let us remember what a cold war was: A cold war was zero people-to-people contact, zero economic contact, proxy wars in 20 plus states around the world between the Soviet Union and the U.S., nuclear triggers posed in each other's direction and a fundamental ideological dispute on the future of two systems for world dominance," Rudd said in an interview with The Japan Times on Wednesday in Tokyo.