When the leaders of the world's two largest economies met in Beijing on Thursday, the opening subject was not Taiwan, trade or the war in the Middle East. It was a conflict that ended more than two millennia ago.
"The world has come to a new crossroads," Chinese President Xi Jinping told Donald Trump as the two began their summit at the Great Hall of the People in the Chinese capital.
"Can China and the United States overcome the so-called 'Thucydides Trap' and create a new paradigm of major-country relations?" Xi asked, resulting in a surge in searches for the term and questions over whether he was making a threat against Trump and the US.
What is the Thucydides Trap?
The concept was coined by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison in the early 2010s, drawing on the ancient Greek historian Thucydides's account of the Peloponnesian War — the nearly three-decade conflict between Athens and Sparta that began in 431 BC.
