The Biden’s administration’s China policy review isn’t finished but the answer is in. Kurt Campbell, Biden’s point man on Indo-Pacific policy, last week declared that the “dominant paradigm” between Washington and Beijing would now be one of competition, and the period of U.S. engagement with China had “come to an end.”

For some, that was a foregone conclusion, yet it is more accurately the product of a clear-eyed analysis of Chinese behavior.

Speaking at a Stanford University virtual seminar in honor of Michel Oksenberg, a China hand who served on Jimmy Carter’s National Security Council, Campbell explained that U.S. policy toward China will operate under a “new set of strategic parameters” in which competition will dominate.