The best US strategy for containment of China is a wider Pacific alliance from South Korea and Japan to Malaysia, plus Australia, etc.
The geopolitical situation is such that China is overtly or implicitly threatening other states, who want to resist their encroachment.
I'm pretty sure we've discussed this before, but I have to ask, why does China need to be "contained?"
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a China apologist. There's the Ughyr situation, it's reneged on its promises to Hong Kong, it's threatened reunification with Taiwan through military means, it's claiming the South China Sea, it's used debt trap diplomacy, etc. There's a lot to criticize China for. But unlike the US, it hasn't unilaterally invaded another country, and it hasn't exerted international influence the way the US has. I'll grant you that in the Cold War, the US was probably the lesser of two evils (when compared to the USSR), but I don't know if we're at that stage yet.
I mean, practically speaking, ignoring moral questions for a moment, if China seized Taiwan today, how would life actually change for the rest of us? If China exerted influence over its neighbours, how does that affect us? It's the same question I have to admit about, say, Iran. Iran's funded militant groups in the Middle-east for ages, and is engaged in a cold war of sorts with Saudi Arabia, but am I really supposed to believe that Iran is some existential threat?
Trump is also representing and feeding the USA's isolationist tendencies: a USA that withdraws from global affairs and policing because it's not their business. This means China, too - so if the CCP ever comes for Taiwan, a USA with years more Trumpist ideology will let it fall. There's not much succour here on te left either as progressives would let it drop as readily, and a dull as ditchwater centreist is as good as it gets for the USA standing up to China.
But should the US be involved in global affairs (or, rather, to the extent that it is)?
Like, you know me, I've questioned the size of the US military budget, and from my eyes, the greatest threats of this century will be climate change rather than military action, but even leading that aside, has the US made things better or worse over the last two decades? It's not the only party, but since Iraq, well...
Again, China's terrible, but at least its terribleness is mostly confined to its own people. Yes, we can rail against debt trap diplomacy, but neoliberalism's kind of screwed over a lot of countries well before China got in on the game.