U.S.-China Cooperation

This program aims to develop active cooperation between the United States and China on regional and global issues of strategic importance to both countries. The program is based on the assumption that bringing China into international regimes is a positive, but insufficient step and that China also must be encouraged to engage in active cooperation with the United States and other major countries. A comprehensive Sino-U.S. dialogue on the major international challenges of the coming years can help avert development of perceived zero-sum competition between China and the United States. To foster better cooperation, the project seeks to develop common understandings and specific proposals for increasing U.S.-China cooperation and avoid misunderstanding and potential conflict on key international issues, including both functional and regional problems.

There are three primary reasons for this:

• the opportunity cost of not cooperating since many critical problems can be better addressed by collaboration among the major powers, especially the United States and China;
  
• the building of political capital for U.S. and Chinese leaders who can point to the evident benefits of cooperation when seeking to weather new tensions in bilateral relations;
  
• the mitigating of U.S. suspicions of Chinese international behavior as China capitalizes on its growing economic strength to expand its reach into areas where the United States has significant interests even if China does so "playing by the rules."  Such concerns have already been voiced regarding Beijing's successful courting of Southeast Asian nations through economic enticements and its development of close ties with the governments of Iran, Sudan and Venezuela to obtain access to critical energy supplies.

In short, “go it alone” policies by China that appeared to be at odds with the policies and interests of the United States or which seemed to expand Chinese influence at U.S. expense could have an extremely detrimental impact on Sino-U.S. relations and exacerbate tensions in the Taiwan Strait over the next decade and beyond.

The project will address four key areas in which the United States and China potentially share common interests and can benefit from cooperation in an increasingly globalized world, but which could also lead to divergent actions, misunderstandings and conflict.