The NYU Center on U.S.-China Relations was launched in 2010 to provide a venue for exploring the increasingly complex interaction between China and the U.S.
China’s national income and international prominence has continued to grow in the past decade. China has raised its international visibility though the creation of new institutions, like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and large projects, like the Belt and Road Initiative.
However, China has also occupied and militarized contested islands in the South China Sea and begun to project power into Central Asia and the Indian Ocean.
Hence, it is essential that specialists and the general public, in both the U.S. and China, have available to them objective research that they can use for shaping the international dialogue on these issues.
The Center will focus predominantly on economic and foreign policy questions. Although issues of culture, history, and language will be evaluated as they impact economic and foreign policy, they will not be the primary arenas of attention here. There are a large number of East Asia and China Institutes already in existence which cover Chinese cultural, social, and historical questions. Rather than duplicating that effort, the NYU Center’s focus will be on current policy problems.
The main activity of the Center will be research, with roughly one-half of the effort being devoted to economics and the other half to foreign policy questions. Obviously, these two areas overlap as well, so there may be years in which the Center changes the mix of its programs. The expectation is that most of the work will be commissioned research that is published in edited volumes or journals.
In addition to commissioned research, the Center will support three other types of activities:
1) An annual conference on developments in the Chinese economy,
2) Monthly seminars on Asian Policy Issues, and
3) Scholarly and student exchanges focused on the policy issues noted above.