At this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth presented a markedly different face to China. Gone were the sharp attacks of 2023; in their place came a pledge to be “strong, quiet and clear,” with not a single reference to Taiwan. The shift, likened by a retired Chinese colonel to a Sichuan opera face-change, has prompted intense debate about whether it reflects a broader American adjustment to multipolar realities — or merely a tactical pause.

The US-China rivalry, of course, predates this rhetorical pivot. Viewed from Beijing, China’s rise has long been treated as an accomplished fact. “It’s not rising. It’s already risen,” Zhou Bo, a former senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army and now a Tsinghua University fellow, told an American news outlet recently. Zhou, who joined the PLA in 1979 as the force embarked on decades of modernisation, pointed to the official goal of fielding a “world-class” military by 2049 — the centenary of the People’s Republic. That ambition has consistently unsettled Washington, which still commands the planet’s most powerful armed forces.

Yet the contest is no longer confined to battleships and fighter jets. As analysts in London note, energy has become the latest — and perhaps most consequential — theatre of the superpower struggle. China, once dependent on imported hydrocarbons, has used its five-year plans to emerge as the global leader in solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles. The United States, by contrast, is racing to catch up, with its own energy dominance increasingly linked to national security. The decarbonisation drive has thus turned into a zero-sum competition for technological supremacy.

Whether Hegseth’s more restrained language portends a genuine US rethink remains uncertain. Some in European capitals see the Pentagon’s softer tone as a pragmatic recognition that open confrontation is too costly, while hardliners in the US Congress may yet demand a return to rhetorical fire. For Beijing, the challenge is consistent: to manage a relationship in which Washington’s military pre-eminence is gradually being eroded — not just by missiles, but by supply chains and clean-energy patents. The next phase of the rivalry will be fought as much in laboratories and lithium markets as on the high seas.