Introduction

The U.S.–China relationship is arguably the most important international relationship in the world today. It involves one country that is the world’s foremost economic and military power, and another country that has the largest population and is enjoying rapid economic growth that could make it a great power in the near future. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of annual trade, thousands of students and scholars traveling across the Pacific each year, and issues related to Taiwan, China’s human rights, and non-proliferation make the relationship “simultaneously extensive and contentious, mutually beneficial and profoundly controversial” (Harding 1995: 49).