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Past Event

Obama in China: Preserving the Rebalance

Past Event

Obama in China: Preserving the Rebalance

Content from the Brookings-Tsinghua Public Policy Center is now archived. Since October 1, 2020, Brookings has maintained a limited partnership with Tsinghua University School of Public Policy and Management that is intended to facilitate jointly organized dialogues, meetings, and/or events.

This November, after focusing on foreign policy concerns around the globe and congressional midterm elections at home, President Barack Obama will travel to Beijing to attend the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in hopes of preserving and enhancing one of his key foreign policy achievements—the rebalance to Asia. Obama’s trip to China will be his first since 2009, and in those intervening five years the bilateral relationship has become increasingly complicated, with tensions spanning a wide range of issues from maritime disputes to cybersecurity to the pace of China’s economic reforms. While both countries agree that a “New Type of Great Power Relations” is needed, it is still not clear what such a relationship entails. President Obama’s trip to China will offer a critical opportunity to shape the U.S.-China relationship and seize on the cooperative spirit of the APEC meeting to strengthen the rebalance to Asia.

On Novemver 5, the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution hosted a full-day conference with two keynote addresses and four panels about the economic, environmental, political, and security implications of President Obama’s trip to China for the 2014 APEC summit and his interactions with President Xi Jinping.

Agenda

Afternoon Keynote

Caroline Atkinson

Head of Global Policy - Google

Former Deputy National Security Advisor - White House

Lunch Break

Caroline Atkinson

Head of Global Policy - Google

Former Deputy National Security Advisor - White House

Introductory Remarks

Morning Keynote

The State of China’s Economy and Free Trade in the Asia-Pacific

U.S.-China Cooperation on Climate Change and the Environment

K

Kelly Sims Gallagher

Director, Center for International Environment and Resource Policy - Tufts University Fletcher School

Ye QI

Director, The Climate Policy Initiative

Former Brookings Expert

J

Jake Schmidt

Director, International Program - Natural Resources Defense Council

Daniel B. Wright

Former Brookings Expert

Founder, President, and CEO - GreenPoint Group

The Domestic Issues and Politics Influencing Obama-Xi Relations

Susan Lawrence

Specialist in Asian Affairs - Congressional Research Service

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