Challenges for China-U.S. Relations in the Age of Trump: Taiwan, the South China Sea, and International Economic Institutions

As Donald Trump comes to power, the United States faces significant challenges in dealing with a now-formidable and recently more assertive China. To a great extent, the issues are rooted in long-term developments and would face any contemporary U.S. leader. To some degree, they are inherited from the bilateral relationship as shaped during Obama’s presidency. In significant part, they have been made more difficult by Trump’s statements and actions, and China’s perceptions and reactions. This pattern extends across many issues. Three notable ones are Taiwan, the South China Sea, and international economic institutions.

Jacques deLisle is the Stephen A. Cozen Professor of Law, professor of political science, director of the Center for East Asian Studies, deputy director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China, and co-director of the Center for Asian Law at the University of Pennsylvania, and director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. His writing, which appears in law reviews, foreign affairs journals, policy journals, edited volumes, and Internet and print media, focuses on China’s engagement with the international order, domestic legal reform in China, and Taiwan’s status and external relations. He is co-editor of China’s Global Engagement (with Avery Goldstein, 2017), New Media, the Internet and a Changing China (with Avery Goldstein and Guobin Yang, 2016), Political Changes in Taiwan under Ma Ying-jeou (with Jean-Pierre Cabestan, 2014), China’s Challenges (with Avery Goldstein, 2014), and China under Hu Jintao (with T.J. Cheng and Deborah Brown, 2005).

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