Executive summary
This report synthesises the findings of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network’s Asia Dialogue on China-US Relations. Based on interviews, writings, and interactions with policy practitioners and analysts from the Asia-Pacific, China, and the United States, the report analyses the structural preferences of regional actors as they pertain to regional stability.
The report frames these preferences in terms of what they reveal about the preferred end-states of regional actors; that is, the long-term roles they wish China and the United States would play in the region. While there can never be a definitive end-state in the region, since change is constant in international relations, the report uses the concept to frame discussions about policy goals of regional stakeholders. A key component of the different and often diffuse ways that experts think about end-states flows from their various preferences for major power primacy, defined here as “military, economic, and diplomatic pre-eminence.”
