From Engagement to Decoupling: U.S.-China Relations Since the End of the Cold War

Your Historians Lecture

Speaker: Tao Wang

Starting in the 1990s, relations between the United States and China were transformed from constructive engagement to strategic competition. A changing international system and policy choices drove this shift. Prof. Wang explains how and why cooperation gave way to confrontation, but shows that confrontation was not inevitable. Taking a bilateral perspective, he challenges accounts that portray the U.S.–China rivalry as unavoidable and suggests that, despite intensifying competition, the relationship’s future trajectory is malleable rather than carved in stone.

Your Historians Series presented in partnership by Iowa State University Department of History and Ames History Museum