August 1, 2024

A woman cycles past the Beijing Stock Exchange building adorned with Lunar New Year decorations, on the Financial Street in Beijing, China, February 8, 2024.

How is China’s domestic situation evolving?

Drawing from decades of collective experience on the ground in China, Brookings experts provide a look into how China’s domestic situation is evolving in areas such as anti-corruption, economic growth, tourism, gender equality, education, and sustainability.

Avoiding war in the South China Sea

Ryan Hass outlines how America can support the Philippines without fighting China. This approach involves reinforcing Philippine defenses, engaging Southeast Asian allies, and maintaining a strong, yet balanced, stance to manage tensions and uphold international law.

Read in Foreign Affairs

Comparing global views of the US and China during the Trump and Biden administrations

Jessica Shao and Patricia M. Kim discuss how global views of the United States generally declined under the Trump administration and rebounded under the Biden administration, before perceptions dimmed in 2024. They argue there is a pressing need for the next administration to reaffirm American global leadership and to strengthen the nation's reputation as a force for peace and stability.

Lack of will isn’t what’s keeping Xi from reforming China’s economy

Mary Gallagher compares the results of China’s recently concluded Third Plenum with its Third Plenum in 2013, finding broad continuity between both events. She highlights President Xi Jinping’s ambition for “economic structural reform”—to remake the Chinese economy so it is more efficient, more coordinated across regions, less polarizing between the haves and the have nots, and more effectively regulated by Beijing.

Read in World Politics Review

Past events

America’s foreign policy: A conversation with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. On July 1, the Foreign Policy program at Brookings hosted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a fireside chat with Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Suzanne Maloney to discuss the Biden administration’s foreign policy vision and the role for U.S. leadership in a rapidly changing world.

How strong is China’s navy? On July 26, Brookings hosted a discussion to assess the relative strengths of America’s and China’s navies and explore steps the U.S. Navy could take to strengthen its position in the face of China’s significant naval buildup.

Welcoming Mary Gallagher to the China Center

Mary E. Gallagher is a nonresident senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings and the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. She was previously the Amy and Alan Lowenstein Professor of Democracy, Democratization, and Human Rights at the University of Michigan and the director of the International Institute. She was the director of the Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Richard H. Rogel Center for Chinese Studies from 2008-20.

Her research focuses on Chinese politics, U.S.-China relations, and Chinese state-society relations, especially labor politics and labor law. Gallagher’s most recent book is “Authoritarian Legality in China: Law, Workers and the State,” published by Cambridge University Press.

More research and commentary

The future of a rules-based international order. Despite deteriorating U.S.-China relations, it is crucial to understand China's specific objectives and challenges to the rules-based international order, Paul Gewirtz argues.

Is there a U.S. "consensus" on China policy? Ali Wyne and Ryan Hass question the presumption of a settled consensus on America’s China policy. They argue that policymakers should be drawing from the widest range of options in charting a path forward with China and should not be constrained by adherence to a thin and brittle consensus.

Crises are terrible things to waste. In an article for the Taipei Times, Ryan Hass notes that U.S. presidents use crises to implement significant reforms and suggests that Taiwan President Lai Ching-te could draw from such examples amid pressures from Beijing and internal political challenges.

Taiwan’s economic renaissance. China’s economic pressure has spurred Taiwan and its leading firms to make adjustments that have strengthened Taiwan’s economic competitiveness, Yifeng Tao explains.

Blinken aims to reassure allies on U.S. commitment to Asia. An article in the New York Times quoted Ryan Hass on how China intends to avoid actions or statements that could influence the U.S. presidential election.

Is there going to be an India-China deal? Tanvi Madan examines the possibility of an India-China deal. The commentary was cited in The Print.

China’s Achilles’ heel: capital flight. Renewed fears of yuan depreciation, possibly triggered by additional U.S. tariffs, could reignite substantial capital flight, posing a significant risk to China's economy, Robin Brooks contends.

About the China Center at Brookings

The John L. Thornton China Center develops timely, independent analysis and policy recommendations to address long-standing challenges related to U.S.-China relations and China's internal development.