ABSTRACT
This year 2009 is truly a year of major anniversaries for China and for the world. It is the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) establishment by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the 30th anniversary of the PRC-USA diplomatic normalization (and the US-Taiwan Relations Act). It is the 90th anniversary of May 4th Movement (that advocated enlightenment and democracy) and the 20th anniversary of the June 4th Tiananmen Incident as well as the collapse of the Berlin Wall (leading to Eastern Europe’s liberalization and the Soviet Union’s demise to end the Cold War). It also marks the half century of the Cuban Revolution and the 35th anniversary of Lisbon’s pink carnation revolution that ushered Portugal’s decolonization of its overseas domains. Closer at hand, Macao celebrates the first decade of its 20 December 1999 retrocession to Chinese rule that ended five centuries of Western colonialism in Asia. Befitting such major historical junctures, this chapter adopts a decade-long
timeframe for the articulation of its two main foci from a trans-Pacific perspective: first, a summary delineation of the foundations of PRC foreign policy, and second, an analytical overview of the key issues in the current PRC-USA links. This chapter will close with summary observations toward the mid-21st century and forward prospecting on Sino-US interface in the aftermath of President Obama’s November 2009 visit to Beijing.
