These voyages demonstrated that the supposed zero-sum life-and-death competition between China and the United States for access to constrained energy, so vividly imagined just a few years earlier, was not going to happen. Global energy supplies are ample, and China and the United States can interact through the global marketplace to mutual benefit. The shale revolution removed at least one major area of contention in U.S.-Chinese relations, creating a new commonality of interests between the nations—trade wars and contention over the coronavirus permitting.
