During the 1980s and from 1995 through 2010 (14 years), there was creeping liberalization in China under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, with elements of civil society, media, rule of law emerging, which made Engagement (capital E) possible.

There are people inside the Chinese Communist Party (not just civil society) who blame Xi Jinping for the deterioration of the relationship, but they cannot have an open 'who lost America' debate because of the censored media system, showing that dissent exists in China even if not publicly visible.

The 'Re-engagement' school argues that the United States should get back to the old engagement strategy, that it should never have abandoned engagement under Trump and Biden, that the old strategy still serves US well, that China is not an adversary or even competitor, and that the US needs to take a deep breath, re-extend the hand to Beijing, and re-engage with the Chinese side.

Shambo believes it would behoove the Chinese side to read his book to better understand the profound changes in American policies and perspectives and China's own agency and role in those changes, though he hardly anticipates a Chinese translation of the book.

Shambo emphasizes that the third element in his analysis is agency: he is not a determinist, believing that both societies have big responsibility and agency to pull back and to construct various mechanisms to manage competition, preventing inevitability of conflict even over Taiwan, since there are other actors besides Washington and Beijing.

On June 4, 1989 (today in this June 4, 2024 event), Shambo reflects that he was watching the Tiananmen crackdown on television from London, where he was in his second year at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), and found himself in TV studios for six weeks trying to interpret what was happening, but was not surprised by the Leninist response under Deng Xiaoping.

When facts change, policy should change, as John Maynard Keynes said ('When the facts change I change my mind. What do you do, sir?'), but some people in the US including the 're-engagement school' haven't changed their minds despite the facts changing.