The Institute for Chinese Studies and Mershon Center for International Security Studies Present:
“Engaging China: A Strategy for Competitive Coexistence”
Mel Gurtov
Portland State University
Abstract: Engaging China is an argument on behalf of deep US-China engagement to counteract the increasing risk today of violent confrontation. The book directly confronts the bipartisan “China threat” consensus in the US and hard-line Chinese perceptions of the US by underscoring areas of common interest: climate change, pandemics, and nuclear arms control. Domestic insecurity significantly influences their leaders' foreign policies. A US policy toward China of competitive coexistence, with engagement as its core, would relieve that insecurity to mutual benefit.
Mel Gurtov (Ph.D., UCLA) is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University, Oregon, and Senior Editor of the quarterly journal Asian Perspective. He previously was on the staff of the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif. (1966-1971), where he was a co-author of the Pentagon Papers, and was Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside (1971-1986). He has published thirty books and numerous articles on East Asian affairs (specializing in China and Korea), U.S. foreign policy, and global politics from a human-interest perspective. His latest book is Engaging China: Rebuilding Sino-American Relations (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). Other recent books are America in Retreat: The Foreign Policy of Donald Trump (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020); Engaging Adversaries: Peacemaking and Diplomacy in the Human Interest (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018); Learning from Fukushima: Nuclear Power in East Asia, edited with Peter Van Ness (ANU Press, 2017); Will This Be China’s Century? A Skeptic’s View (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013); and Global Politics in the Human Interest, 5th ed. (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007).
