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

Thirty-four years after President Carter signed the Taiwan Relations Act, US arms sales to Taiwan continue to impede the positive development of Sino-US relations. However, with peaceful cross-Straits relations, Wu Zurong argues it’s time to stop interfering in China’s internal affairs and allow US relations with both China and Taiwan to flourish.

It will be of mutual benefit if China and the US can cooperate on a number of issues, especially when those issues revolve around the security of the relationship. Therefore the three greatest security issues are the lack of mutual trust, Taiwan, and US domestic laws that hinder military-to-military cooperation.

Confucius says: “At thirty, I was already well established.” Unfortunately, the August 17th communiqué is far from being “established”. The sale of U.S. arms, until now, remains the most sensitive and the most destructive element in the bilateral relationship.

On April 14 Iran returned to the negotiating table to address its nuclear issue with the members of the Six Nations talks.  Since revealing its clandestine nuclear development program in the early 2000s, the Iranian nuclear issue has become a perennial problem for the international community. It is true that Iran is entitled to civilian [...]

More than one-half of Americans think China is already the world’s leading economy – an astonishing misperception, given that China’s gross domestic product is still less than half of America’s. As George Orwell once observed, “Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.” China has grown at a breakneck pace for [...]

Chinese officials have joined other foreign governments in opposing North Korea’s plans to test a long-range rocket that could also serve as a delivery vehicle for a nuclear warhead. The Chinese outspokenness on this issue is unusual since, during past provocations by the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK), Beijing adopted a much lower profile. [...]