Because both the US and China can affect huge influence on the international order, their bilateral relations matter. It was thus not surprising that the meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden in San Francisco at the APEC 2023 Leaders’ Summit received a lot of media attention. The world’s public is interested in knowing what China’s intentions are. For example, is China attempting to increase its global influence and shape the international order through its economic might and the institutions it leads? Many already seem to know for certain what the US is doing. They claim that the US is instituting measures in response to China’s rise, appearing to contain China’s growth, development, influence, and its impact on the liberal international order. Interestingly, relations between the US and China have not always been bad. There was a time when both were strategically aligned. In the early 1970s, for instance, both the US and China saw each other as allies against the Soviet Union. In the 1980s through to the 1990s, their relations could be described as accommodative, as China accepted US leadership post-Cold War and the US hoped that through integration China would transform politically and economically. It is hard to imagine that in the decade before, both countries found themselves directly at war on the Korean peninsula and indirectly in Indochina. So, what happened in between to afford this change? If history is made up of a series of pivotal moments, then Nixon’s visit to China was that pivotal moment in US-China relations that heralded a period of stable, mutually advantageous, and hopeful relations; at least it is often portrayed as such. This chapter attempts to investigate the role conceptions held by the US and China, and how and what caused these to change, and consequently the role relationship that emerges.