CHINA US Focus - Perspectives shaping the world's most important bilateral relationship

When U.S. Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), both vice presidential hopefuls, recently declared their opposition to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, they virtually guaranteed that it would be dead on arrival if it were sent to the Senate. A group of 34 senators, including Ayotte and Portman and [...]

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now paying her 11-day visit to sub-Saharan Africa including Senegal, South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi and South Africa. Apart from aiming at wooing African-American voters for the upcoming elections at home and pursuing the Obama administration’s new strategy toward sub-Saharan Africa unveiled in the middle of June, Clinton’s [...]

To be a very powerful state in world politics does not make for an easy life. China increasingly realizes the predicaments it faces while its power has been growing rapidly. Indeed, the disturbance of China’s regional diplomacy in recent years suggests that it is encountering daunting challenges on exercising and securing power.

During his visit to Vietnam in early June, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta displayed eagerness to have the U.S. military return to the bases it once occupied at Cam Ranh Bay.  The Pentagon lost its foothold there when South Vietnam fell to communist forces in the mid-1970s, and military officials have longed to regain [...]

Despite three decades worth of effort in political, economic, social, cultural, and even military exchanges, the strategic mutual trust between China and the United States has not increased as significantly as expected. On the contrary, the past several years have witnessed an increase of “strategic deficit.” An outdated, arrogant, and narrow-minded mentality characterized by “zero-sum” and “Cold War” still haunts their bilateral relations.

Both China and the United States stand as one of the leading world powers, and shoulder a historic responsibility for the development of the human society and the progress of world civilization. As a matter of fact, China and the United States have already started to explore the type of relationship to be developed between them.