ABSTRACT
Despite the significance, in various ways, of the preceding immediate Asian neighbours, it was the Sino-American relationship in the Asia-Pacific that became ever more significant during the post-Cold War 1990s. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, China was left with a remaining hegemonic threat from the United States, whilst the United States saw China as a competitor with whom there was no common anti-Soviet glue to keep them together. As an academic issue, China still remained an enigma in the 1990s. According to Jonathan Spence ‘China . . . now provides endless ground for armchair speculation’ in which ‘we do not understand China and so we constantly invent it’ through images, perceptions and misperceptions, in which ‘China’s opacity is what draws people, along with the remoteness and the size’ (1990: 110). However, China was no mere academic issue. Her relationship with the United States was becoming the most important bilateral relationship on the globe. William Overholt commented, ‘these two great civilizations must now engage each other – for better or for worse – to a degree that has never before occurred’, since ‘much of the future of humanity will hinge on whether both sides can approach this engagement with appropriate gravity and earnest efforts to understand one another’s real motives’ (1994: 416). China could not be ignored; ‘living with China’ (Vogel 1997) had become a central issue for the USA.
