Abstract:
During their meeting at the Annenberg retreat in California in June 2013, the Chinese President Xi Jinping and the US President Barack Obama mapped out the future trans-Pacific cooperation between China and the US. To put the strategic consensus reached by the two leaders on building a new type of major-country relationship into practice has become a pressing research tack for think tankers in both countries. This report starts with US foreign policy debates during the 2012 presidential election, proceeds by examining the evolving political landscape and resultant foreign policy orientation in the United States, with a special focus on analyzing and summing up US adjustments of its Asia-Pacific strategy and its Middle East strategy, and ends by exploring the prospect of Obama administration’s China policy in its second term.
The report is of the view that the Obama administration, during its second term, will take measures to alter its assertive Asia-Pacific strategy and make it more stable and pragmatic. As a result, the tense situation in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to be relaxed somewhat. More US diplomatic resources and endeavors will be redirected to the Middle East, and its previous strategic retreat from the Middle East will slow down, though its overall principles and policies of seeking peace and avoiding wars will remain unchanged. China and the United States will find themselves entangled in controversies and contradictions on regional issues, cyber security and other issues. However, their differences and frictions are, in general, still manageable. So long as the two countries move toward the same direction, it is possible for them to work together and build a new type of major-country relationship through their deepened and expanded cooperation.
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