CAPP Events: 2002

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Fifth Annual RAND-China Reform Forum Conference Focuses on Economic and Security Issues

Since 1998, the China Reform Forum (CRF), a think tank affiliated with the Central Party School, and RAND have jointly organized an annual conference of experts from China and the United States focusing on economic and security subjects of mutual concern. The fifth joint conference was held October 31-November 1, 2002 in Beijing. Participants and observers included scholars, businesspeople, and government officials from both the United States and China.

RAND participants included International Security and Defense Policy Center Director James Dobbins, Asia Policy Chair Bill Overholt, Senior Economist Benjamin Zycher, and Charles Wolf, RAND Senior Economic Advisor and Corporate Fellow, International Economics. Topics addressed in the conference included the implications for Sino-U.S. relations of the Bush administration's evolving national security strategy, accomplishments and prospects of China's economic reform, possible obstacles to China's continued economic growth, and the effect of counterterrorist efforts on the economic outlook for the United States and Europe.

Other participants came from several offices of the state council and government ministries, the Chinese Academies of Social Sciences and of Science, respectively, Chinese universities, as well as from the American Embassy and the Office of the US Defense Attaché. Several businesspeople from the U.S. and one from Taiwan attended the conference.

Roundtable discussions addressed the global anti-terrorism campaign and its implications for U.S.-Sino relations, the convergence and divergence of regional and global interests between the U.S. and China, and economic issues concerning China and the U.S.

Discussions were lively and candid, and, like the four previous conferences before it, the 2002 gathering in Beijing was considered by participants to be a valuable source of ideas and information useful for policy, as well as for advancing mutual understanding.