Introduction

In November 2009, United States President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao held their first summit meeting in Beijing, and the Foreign Policy Research Institute published a collection of essays by scholars from the United States, the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan addressing many aspects of U.S.-China relations and issues that were on the agenda, or should be on the agenda, for the two leaders.  The 14 months following the Beijing summit were an eventful— and in many respects troubled —time for U.S.-China relations, a period marked by rising Chinese assertiveness especially on questions of disputed claims to territory and maritime zones, heightened tensions between the People’s Republic of China and U.S. friends and allies in Asia, a difficult global meeting on climate change, an increasingly volatile situation on the Korean peninsula, and seemingly intractable disputes between the United States and China on a host of trade-related issues. Cross-strait relations were a relative bright spot, with the two sides inking an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement and continuing the warming trend begun in 2008…

Edited by Jacques deLisle, director of FPRI’s Asia Program, this November 2009 collection includes eight essays on topics such as the Taiwan Strait, North Korea, and U.S.-China cooperation.