The United States and China in Power Transition - Strategic Studies ...

203. The highest-ranking Chinese official to openly advocate
the continuation of this strategy is Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
He made this call at a meeting with China’s ambassadors (who
were home to report their duties) in 2004. See Wu Jianmin (吴
建民), a career Chinese diplomatic, former Chinese Ambassador
to France, head of the Chinese Foreign Affairs College, and now
influential Chinese think-tank, “把握时代的特点, 走和平发展道
路” (“Grasping the Theme of the Era and Continuing on the Road
of Peaceful Development”), 外交评论 (Foreign Affairs Review), No.
84, October 2005.
204. Among the American China watchers, David Lampton
probably takes the best note of this special character of the
U.S.-China relations. See David M. Lampton, Same Bed, Different
Dreams: Managing U.S.-China Relations, 1989-2000. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2001.
205. Liu Mingfu. See also President Obama’s remark that the
United States must not be number two. “Remarks by the President
in State of the Union Address,” U.S. Capitol, Washington,
DC, January 27, 2010. John Mearsheimer calls himself an offensive
realist in his book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, New York:
Norton, 2001.
206. There have been many writings about the decline of the
United States. However, the United States has shown its power of
resilience time and again. There are, therefore, many other writings
to warn the world, and China in particular, not to read too
much into the “U.S. decline literature.” See Charles Krauthammer,
“The Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs, 1991; Wohlforth,
“The Stability of a Unipolar World,” International Security, Vol. 24,
No. 1, Summer 1999; Charles Krauthammer, “An American Foreign
Policy for a Unipolar World,” Washington, DC: AEI Press,
2004, Robert J. Lieber, “Falling Upwards Declinism, the Box Set,”
available from www.worldaffairsjournal.org; Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “The
Future of American Power: Dominance and Decline in Perspective,”
Foreign Affairs, November/December 2010. Nye makes the
following observation, “Yet it is unlikely that the United States
will decay like ancient Rome, or even that it will be surpassed by
another state, including China.” See Nye, “China’s Rise Doesn’t
Mean War . . .,” Foreign Policy, January/February 2011. For the
U.S. relative decline, see Huntington and Toynbee, who were
239