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This article briefly reviews the role exchanges and dialogues have played in U.S.-China relations since President Nixon's visit to China in 1972, and examines in more detail the process, significance and outlook of recent dialogues. The overall record of dialogues shows that they are important instruments in the policy "tool kit" of each side to deal with salient areas of common interests and disagreement that have broadened in scope as a result of China's rising international importance and the increasing salience of an ever wider range of issues in U.S.-Chinese relations in the 21st century. Both sides view these policy instruments positively; they serve as shock absorbers in periods of difficulty, provide the basis for actual or potential channels of informal communication in times of crisis, and promote efforts to broaden common ground in U.S.-Chinese relations. The checkered record of military exchanges is among the array of evidence showing the reality that dialogues are subservient to the respective interests of the leaders on either side. Dialogues are instruments of improved relations but they do not compel improvement, which at bottom is decided by policy elites in Beijing and Washington. After forty years of efforts to normalize U.S.-China relations, those elites cooperate closely on a wide range of issues but also reflect wariness toward one another that underlines important diverging interests and differences dividing the two powers. (ISS-Stud/GIGA)

American preoccupation with the global economic recession and conflicts in Southwest Asia and the Middle East indicated that US relations with the rest of the Asia-Pacific region were likely to be of generally secondary importance at the start of the Obama administration. In Asia, the economic crisis put a premium on close US collaboration with the major economies, China and Japan, and on avoiding egregiously selfserving economic practices that could prompt protectionism and curb world growth. Apart from the Middle East-Southwest Asian region, the other major area of US security concern in Asia was North Korea. North Korea's escalating provocations created a major international crisis in 2009 that forced the Obama government to change priorities and give top-level attention to dealing with Pyongyang. The provocations included a long range ballistic missile test, a nuclear weapons test (North Korea's second), withdrawal from the Six-Party Talks and resumption of nuclear weapons development. Longstanding US concern with the security situation in the Taiwan Straits declined as President Ma Yingjeou reversed the pro-independence agenda of his predecessor and reassured China. The Obama government seemed poised to build on and make a few needed adjustments to Bush administration policies towards regional allies and emerging powers, China and India. Early indicators suggest that enhanced US activism and flexibility in Southeast Asia may represent a significant change in US policy in Asia under an Obama administration that otherwise seems generally inclined to adhere fairly closely to pragmatic and constructive US approaches to key Asia issues in recent years. (Contemp Southeast Asia/GIGA)