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2 superpowers, 1 playbook: Why Chinese and US bureaucrats think and act alike
 The year 2025 has not been a great one for U.S.-Chinese relations. Tit-for-tat tariffs and the scramble over rare earth elements has dampened economic relations between the world's two leading economies. Meanwhile, territorial disputes between China and American allies in the Indo-Pacific region have further deepened the intensifying military rivalry.
This rift has often been portrayed as a clash of opposing ideological systems: democracy versus autocracy; economic liberalism versus state-led growth; and individualism versus collectivism.
But such framing relies on a top-down look at the two countries premised on statements and claims of powerful leaders. What it obscures is that both superpowers are administered by the same kind of professionals: career bureaucrats.
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