China policy has been a periodic whipping boy for US politicians searching for issues with which to bludgeon each other. Given that tradition, today's US-China relationship represents an enormous diplomatic achievement by seven consecutive administrations in Washington and their counterparts in Beijing.
US-China relations are pretty much like America's ties with the rest of the world's powers. In fact, they are somewhat better than America's current relations with many of its putative allies and historic friends. How did this 'stealth' normalisation occur? How should the US and China push things further forward?
Think of the Sino-American relationship as resting on a three-legged stool, the legs representing security, economic and cultural ties, respectively. During the 1970s and 1980s, our stool would have had a long security leg, a very short economic leg, and a somewhat longer cultural leg, making for a very unstable stool indeed.
But during the 1990s, with the demise of the Soviet Union, our stool's security leg was shortened drastically while the economic and cultural legs continually lengthened. The September 11 attacks once again stretched the security leg, giving rise to our current arrangement in which each leg is now approximately the same length and strength - a much more stable stool.
Speaking non-metaphorically, the security leg has been lengthened and strengthened by China's co-operation in the war on terror, its assistance in pushing the North Korean nuclear crisis towards the bargaining table, its non-obstructionist role in the UN Security Council on such issues as the Iraq War, and by its relatively relaxed response to the US presence in Central Asia and Japan's gradually changing security posture.
The economic leg has steadily lengthened and strengthened, as well. As of April this year, China held US$119.4 billion in US Treasury securities - second only to Japan - not to mention corporate, local and municipal bonds. China is a consideration in the US debt market. US firms operating in China are a growing and significant source of jobs. The cultural leg, too, has steadily grown in strength and length. Not only is the number of Americans studying the Chinese language modestly rising, but large numbers of Chinese are also studying and receiving training in America (63,211 in 2001-2002) and elsewhere in the west.
