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asia policy
workers in 2015, with Chinese companies registering a sevenfold
increase in the first nine months of 2016. 7
• In the 2015–16 academic year, a total of 328,547 Chinese students
studied at U.S. universities and vocational schools, generating
$11.43 billion in revenue. Additionally, an estimated 50,000 Chinese
students attended U.S. secondary schools during the same period. 8
• In 2014, Chinese tourists spent an impressive $24 billion in the United
States. In 2015, 2.6 million Chinese tourists visited the United States,
and this figure is expected to rise to 2.9 million in 2016, which was
branded as “U.S.-China tourism year.” 9
• Dozens of “sister city” and state-province relationships as well as a
variety of nongovernmental cultural exchanges fortify societal ties.
These statistics and other indicators are all evidence of deep U.S.-China
interactions and interdependence. This cooperative dimension serves to
buffer the competitive dimension to a significant extent, and this reality
is good news for overall relations. Both sides need to constantly work to
expand and deepen this cooperative dimension, but it also should not be
overestimated. At the end of the day, U.S.-China relations are a mixed
cooperative/competitive relationship (“coopetition”). 10
The Menu of Issues
So, where does all this leave the Sino-American relationship going
forward? There are, of course, a host of issues on the bilateral, regional,
and global agendas that confront the Trump administration and the two
governments. On the U.S. side, these include:
7 “China Investment in U.S. Economy Set for Record, but Political Concerns Grow,” Wall Street
Journal, April 12, 2016 u http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-investment-in-u-s-economy-setfor-record-but-political-concerns-grow-1460422802;
and Thilo Hanemann, Daniel H. Rosen, and
Cassie Gao, “Two-Way Street: 25 Years of U.S.-China Direct Investment,” Rhodium Group and
the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, November 2016 u https://www.ncuscr.org/
twowaystreet.
8 Institute of International Education, “Open Doors Fact Sheet: China,” 2016 u http://www.iie.org/
Research-and-Publications/Open-Doors/Data/Fact-Sheets-by-Country/2016.
9 U.S. Department of Commerce statistics cited in Chen Weihua, “China Tourists a Boost
to U.S.,” China Daily, March 17, 2016 u http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/us/2016-03/17/
content_23902119.htm; and “U.S. and China to Launch 2016 U.S.-China Tourism Year,” U.S.
Department of Commerce, Press Release, February 25, 2016 u https://www.commerce.gov/news/
press-releases/2016/02/us-and-china-launch-2016-us-china-tourism-year.
10 See David Shambaugh, “Tangled Titans: Conceptualizing U.S.-China Relations,” in Tangled Titans:
The United States and China, ed. David Shambaugh (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), 3–24.
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