"A New Cold War? China and America in the Age of Trump"

For four decades, one of the major goals of U.S. foreign policy has been to help China modernize, integrate it into the global political and economic system, and create an enduring Sino-American cooperative relationship. U.S. policy was based on the assumption that as China developed and engaged with the rest of the world, it would not only work to strengthen the liberal international order, but that it would eventually if hesitantly liberalize at home. Today, that assumption lies in tatters, and U.S.-China relations are at their most antagonistic level since before the 1970s. In Washington, D.C., the common wisdom has shifted to view America and China as locked in an increasingly negative and aggressive competition, thanks to Beijing's flouting of International norms, rampant theft of U.S. intellectual property, and export of its authoritarian model abroad. 

Are the U.S. and China locked in a new Cold War? Did Americans miscalculate how a modernized, powerful China would act? How strong is China, actually? Michael Auslin (MA '91), Stanford fellow, former Yale professor, and author of the best-selling End of the Asian Century, will discuss the new era in U.S.-China relations and how it will shape the 21st century.