Susan Shirk Quoted in The Economist
Less biding and hiding: China is becoming more nationalistic and more assertive. How will other countries react?
12/02/2010
The Economist
“WHO is your enemy?” It was a fine Beijing day in early summer this year. In the seminar room on the campus of Peking University one of a delegation of visiting American academics posed the question to Wang Jisi, dean of the School of International Studies. There was a moment’s silence. Mr Wang hesitated before looking up and replying: “Most Chinese would say the US is the enemy.”
And yet, as Robert Ross sets out in his book, “Chinese Security Policy”, America and China have had a remarkably productive partnership since President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger turned up in Beijing in 1972. At first this was based on a shared antagonism towards the Soviet Union, which China had fought in border clashes in 1969. Under Mao, China had often bullied its neighbours, but had now subordinated this part of its foreign policy because co-operation with America was more important. Under Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s eventual successor, China even reluctantly accepted America’s continuing arms sales to Taiwan.
Click here to read the full news article.Related Links
Susan Shirk is director of the University of California system-wide Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and Ho Miu Lam professor of China and Pacific Relations at IR/PS.
She founded in 1993 and continues to lead the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD), an unofficial “track-two” forum for discussions of security issues among defense and foreign ministry officials and academics from the United States, Japan, China, Russia, and the Koreas.
