Arranging Chinese and U.S. flags on stage at the Third China-US Strategic Economic Dialogue at Grand Epoch City on Dec. 13, 2007, in Xianghe, China. (AP Photo)

Once upon a time, just a few decades ago, the United States saw Communist China as a revolutionary threat, but a revolution with barefoot soldiers.

Then came China’s opening, and the U.S. saw a billion Chinese customers. It turns out, Americans were the big customers. Now China is getting rich, and, some say, leading a revolution in the whole world order — away from the West. Away from the American era, American values, American power. That’s big.

It seems like only yesterday that American scholar Francis Fukuyama wrote his essay “The End of History”after the fall of the Soviet Union. What most people took away from his essay was this: The global battle over the best great system was over. Liberal democracy and market dynamics had won.

Well, China only got half that memo…

Now, many wonder how China’s rapidly emergent power and values will shape the world. And how the U.S. will respond. This hour, in our last broadcast from Shanghai, we look at the way ahead for the U.S. and China.

Guests:

Joining us in our studio, Sun Zhe is a professor at the Institute for International Studies and Director of the Center for U.S.-China relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He has written extensively on comparative politics and U.S.-China relations, and is considered one of the leading scholars in the field of American Studies and U.S.-China Relations in China.

Also with us in Shanghai is Huang Renwei, professor of International Relations and Vice President of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. He is also a top scholar on U.S.-China relations.

And joining us from Beijing is Dan Guttman, visiting professor at Tsinghua University School of Public Policy and Public Management. He has taught at five of China’s top universities. At Fudan University in Shanghai, he co-taught a course with Sun Zhe on Chinese-American relations.