To foresee and help navigate the future relationship over the next 20 years and beyond between China and the United States, the two countries need to think outside the U.S.-China bilateral box. Relations between Beijing and Washington will not be determined only by bilateral issues such as Taiwan, Tibet, trade, human rights, PLA military modernization, and other areas that are chronic points of tension but which the two sides have learned to manage. -->

What kind of relationship will China and the United States have in ten years? Will it be primarily cooperative and collaborative in the face of the foreseeable – and unforeseeable – challenges the world will face? Or will the two countries drift toward strategic rivalry and hostile competition? -->

For years much of Asia and the rest of the world had thought -- or at least wished -- that China's ascent as an economic superpower would be a "peaceful rise" full of "win-win" solutions reflecting the country's oft-stated desire for a "harmonious world."

The media in China, Europe, and the U.S. would have their audiences believe America’s increased engagement of Asia and China’s expanding relations with Europe constitute a fearsome, new Great Game. American and European analysts allege that China is out to eat the West’s lunch, and the Transatlantic Community must do something to stop it. Chinese analysts prejudge that America seeks to constrain China’s pursuit of its interests, and China must break the blockade before it successfully coalesces.

On October 26, the Atlantic Council's Asia Program hosted a discussion examining China’s third quarter economic performance and implications for the country's strategies to address future economic growth challenges.

Banning Garrett, Director of the Asia Program at the Atlantic Council, published "The Next Stage" in The Beijing Review. In it, he argues that the US and China are becoming increasingly interconnected, finding themselves "in the proverbial "same boat" on a wide range of global challenges."

The China-U.S. relationship for the 21st Century is being forged in a new, strategically interdependent world—a globalized world no longer characterized by the zero-sum strategic competition among the major powers that dominated the Cold War and preceding eras. -->

From the start of the global economic crisis, it has become clear that a new world order has emerged. While the world is increasingly interconnected, it is specifically the U.S.-China relationship that will determine how and if our leaders can meet the major global challenges of the 21st century.