To commemorate the fifth anniversary of the China in the World podcast, Paul Haenle is interviewing five of the most respected Chinese international affairs scholars to discuss this important inflection point in U.S.-China relations. For the first episode in this series, Haenle spoke with Cui Liru, former president of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. During the episode, Haenle and Cui discussed lessons from the past 40 years of the bilateral relationship, central areas of cooperation and competition, and a future framework that will allow China and the U.S. to avoid conflict. Cui asserted that U.S. and Chinese interests are not fundamentally incompatible, but that the relationship is in a fragile transition period that will require each country to work harder to better understand the other side’s common and diverging interests.

Paul Haenle

Paul Haenle holds the Maurice R. Greenberg Director’s Chair at the Carnegie–Tsinghua Center for Global Policy based at Tsinghua University in Beijing. His research focuses on Chinese foreign policy and U.S.-China relations.

Cui Liru

Cui Liru is a senior researcher at the Taihe Institute in Beijing. He is the former president of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.