The Financial Meltdown, the US elections, and Prospects for US-China Relations

David Bachman will speak on U.S.-China Relations.

The Financial Meltdown and subsequent economic and financial developments are contributing to the fundamental challenging of the assumptions embedded in fundamental institutions of world order.  In particular, the trade-offs between risk and reward with regard to economic openness are changing--whether in the areas of finance, agricultural trade, or trade more generally in light of profound volatity in exchange rates.  Managing the effects of the coming recession is likely to be the highest priority of the new president.  But he will also face a more than full agenda of foreign affairs issues before he even gets to China policy.  Moreover, to the extent that China becomes an even more important economic actor in trying to manage the meltdown, US policy will be even more constrained in the next administration.  

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David Bachman is a professor of Chinese politics and foreign policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. He is also the associate director of the Jackson School. Until July 2003, he served as the Chair of the China Studies Program at the University of Washington for eleven years. He is the author of Bureaucracy, Economy, and Leadership in China, Chen Yun and the Chinese Political System [an authorized Chinese translation of which appeared in 2002], and co-editor of Yan Jiaqi and China's Struggle for Democracy. He has written about 50 articles and book chapters on Chinese domestic and foreign policy, China's political economy, and Sino-American relations. He is currently working on a book on defense industrialization in China, 1949-1985, and projects related to China's rise in Asia. At the University of Washington, he teaches courses on Chinese domestic and foreign policy, Asian politics, society, and international relations, among other subjects.

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