U.S.-China Financial Relations: Past, Present and Future

In its continuing celebration of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, the National Committee featured former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury W. Michael Blumenthal in a conversation with National Committee President Stephen Orlins on April 20, 2009 in Washington, D.C. Their discussion shed light on the current global financial crisis via the prism of the historical Sino-American financial relationship, its ramifications for the present and potential for the future.

Dr. Blumenthal, a former chairman of the National Committee, was born in Germany, witnessed World War II during his teenage years in Shanghai, and settled in America in the late 1940s. He was a professor of economics at Princeton University, an advisor on trade to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, CEO and chairman of several major American corporations, and secretary of the treasury from 1977 to 1979, during the Carter administration. In that position, he negotiated and signed the landmark 1979 agreement concerning the settlement of asset claims between the United States and China, and was President Carter’s representative at the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

This program was a special offering of an ongoing lecture series conducted by the National Committee in partnership with Jones Day. The National Committee would like to thank the America-China Forum, the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Center for International and Strategic Studies, the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and the US-China Business Council for their cooperation on this program.