AT THE CENTER

China’s Trajectory: Up or Down?

In the wake of the forthcoming presidential election, the incoming administration will begin to develop policy toward China. U.S. perceptions of China’s capabilities and intentions provide an essential foundation for American strategy and policy. Since strategy and policy are oriented toward not only the present, but also to the foreseeable future, U.S. assessments of China’s

“The most important summits between leaders in Washington and Moscow—during the Nixon and Reagan administrations—took place precisely when the two governments recognized the dangers of inveterate mutual hostility and sought to limit them.”

-Paul J. Saunders

“The threat to the liberal order comes not from political shifts within democratic societies from liberal to conservative parties; that’s the normal cycle of democratic politics. It comes from resurgent autocrats in Russia, China, North Korea and Iran who do not tolerate such political shifts. Authoritarianism, not nationalism, poses the real threat to the liberal order.”

-Jacob Heilbrunn