A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste by Ryan Hass

“The U.S.-China relationship has now reached what respected China scholar David M. Lampton describes as a “tipping point.i” The basic assumptions and expectations that guided the development of U.S.-China relations over the past 40 years no longer hold and, so far, no consensus has formed in either country about what should replace them. This paper seeks to contribute a perspective on the future trajectory of U.S.-China relations by addressing how the relationship reached its current inflection point, why this moment may differ from previous periods of bilateral friction, and what key questions the United States needs to answer about the type of relationship it seeks with China going forward.”

From A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste by Ryan Hass, David M. Rubenstein Fellow, John L. Thornton China Center and the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Brookings Institution.

Written for the Carter Center’s symposium to commemorate President Carter’s 1979 decision to normalize relations with China. View or download the paper here.