While online registration for this session has closed, you can still purchase a ticket by visiting the Osher table in the Lebanon Opera House lobby on the morning of July 7.

Series presented in conjunction with the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding.

Competition has become the leitmotif among American foreign policy specialists for characterizing the American relationship with China. Policy journals are filled with articles on US-China competition, while U.S. government officials and documents use this terminology regularly (although the Chinese government rejects it). What does it really mean, though, to characterize the US-China relationship as competitive? In what ways, exactly, do the United States and China compete? Is competition inherently negative—or are there positive aspects as well? Is competition mutually exclusive from cooperation?

As the broad trajectory of the relationship in recent years has been towards increasing frictions and increasing rivalry—simply managing bilateral relations so that the competitive dynamics do not bleed into a full adversarial relationship should be the principal goal of both countries. The Biden administration has tried, but it has been difficult. Beijing has proven a very truculent interlocutor. While already quite stressed, the U.S.-China relationship could get worse—much worse—and it is not impossible to imagine a war breaking out between the two powers. It is therefore imperative for the two sides to build a framework of managed competition.

In this opening series lecture, Professor David Shambaugh of George Washington University—one of the world’s leading experts on China and US-China relations—will discuss how we should think about Sino-American competition. This lecture which will set the stage for subsequent ones in the Summer Lecture Series.