2320Spring 2025
3 Credits

Sino-U.S. Relations

Gain a better understanding of one of the most important bilateral relations in modern history.
Shi Yinhong 时殷弘
Course Introduction
Shi Yinhong 时殷弘
Shi Yinhong 时殷弘Ph.D. Nanjing University

Dr. Shi Yinhong is a professor of International Relations, Chairman of Academic Committee of the School of International Studies, and Director of the Center on American Studies at Renmin University of China in Beijing. He has served as a counselor of the State Council of China since February 2011. He previously was a professor of International History at Nanjing University from 1993 to 1998, and a professor of International Relations and Director of the Center for International Strategic Studies at International Relations Academy, Nanjing from 1998 to 2001. He also served as the President of American Historical Research Association of China from 1996 to 2002.

Dr. Shi obtained a Ph.D. degree in International History at Nanjing University in 1988 and a M.A. degree in the History of the U.S. Foreign Relations at the same institution in 1981. He was a visiting fellow at Harvard-Yenching Institute at Harvard University from 1983 to 1984, a visiting fellow at Federal Institute for Eastern European and International Studies in Cologne in 1992, a Fulbright research visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1995 to 1996. He taught graduate courses as a visiting professor of Public Policy three times at University of Michigan, a visiting professor of Modern China Studies at Aichi University in Nagoya, and a visiting instructor of Chinese Foreign Policy at University of Denver. He was invited to deliver speeches or participate in scholarly conferences abroad about two-hundred times mainly in Asia, the United States, and Europe.

Dr. Shi Yinhong has engaged in research and teaching on the history and theory of international politics, strategic studies, East Asia security, and foreign policies of both China and the United States. He has over 630 professional articles and essays published in academic journals, magazines and newspapers. In addition, he has written 18 books and translated 20 books, mainly on strategic history and international politics.

Interests
  • Chinese Foreign Policy
  • History
  • International Relations

Sino-U.S. Relations

UIBE serves as our School of Record
3 Credits
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Course Description

The goal of this course is to help students obtain, in the context of dynamic history and complex realities of power and ideas, a better grasp of the China-U.S. relations, the most important bilateral relations to China at the present as well as in a large part of her modern history, and also increasingly likely the most important ones to the United States in the coming decades. There is already little doubt in the world that the prospects of this bilateral relationship will in a large part shape the world political economy and more. The general orientation of the past evolution of the intercourses between these two powers with very different traditions but the similar “continental” magnitude will be surveyed, the developments in the most recent years and months emphasized, and the predictable future prospects discussed.

The course is characterized, among other things, by prominence of the political and strategic aspects of the international relations and foreign policy, while their social and economic ones are also touched from time to time, especially when they do have significant politico-strategic implications. As in most other courses in the field of international studies almost anywhere, students are expected to have at least a minimum grounding in general international political theories. There may be often a largely consistent theme or framework of “grand strategy” emerged in discussing, which has been marked by a holistic approach, a focus on the calculated relationship between ends and means, a constant concern with the cost-effectiveness of different policy options, and the most important strategic quality of unrelenting adaptation to the unending changes of the world.

The weekly themes of the course are as follows:
I. The emergence of the American preponderance and China’s evolving relations with the international society

II. Conflict, confrontation, and rapprochement: the China-U.S. relations in the Cold War years and beyond

III. Crisis in Tiananmen and its aftermath

IV. From the Embassy bombing, through 9/11, to the 16th Party Congress of the CCP

V. Toward partnership through vicissitudes

VI. Drastic ups and downs: Obama and China

VII. Obama and China again: Historic rivalry and competition over Asia-Pacific?

VIII. Effects of political economy and culture: The United States and the Chinese high Politics

IX. South China Sea dispute: U.S. power in the Pacific and China’s maritime

aspiration

X. Northeast Asia: China’s extraordinarily intensive maritime confrontation

with Japan

XI. Northeast Asia: China, U.S., and the oft-dramatic North Korea problem,

and troubled China-ROK political relations

XII. New problems at a new agenda: Finance, trade, energy, investment,

strategic weaponry, and more

XIII. China’s rising, and the uncertain future of China-U.S. relations