The importance of the relationship between the United States and the
People's Republic of China has only grown since Richard Nixon's epochal
visit in 1972. By the early twenty-first century, when the rise of China
had become an inescapable fact, most American policy makers and experts
saw bilateral ties with China as the most consequential
foreign-relations priority for the United States.
In recent years, even before the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S.-China
relationship has rapidly deteriorated--and the whole world has felt the
consequences. This book brings together leading China specialists to
offer a retrospective on relations between the United States and China
over the last half-century and consider what might be next. The
contributors--including academics, leaders of China-related
nongovernmental organizations, and former diplomats and government
officials--analyze the relationship from a range of perspectives:
political, diplomatic, economic, social, cultural, commercial,
educational, medical, and military. They reassess American engagement
with China from the late Mao years onward, covering leaders from Deng
Xiaoping through Xi Jinping. The contributors highlight not only the
accomplishments and hard-won successes of engagement but also the
mistakes and misunderstandings, acknowledging the well-earned distrust
and genuine frictions that plague the relationship today.
Multidisciplinary and comprehensive, Engaging China is a vital
reconsideration for a time when the stakes of U.S. policy toward China
have never been higher.
