Dancing the dance, and talking the talk

As someone who has been a dedicated China watcher from Washington for about three decades, David Shambaugh has felt a growing sense of unease and anxiety about the Sino-US relationship in recent years.

Despite the fact that the two countries vowed to build a "positive, cooperative and comprehensive" relationship during President Hu Jintao's first state visit to the United States in January 2011, something has changed, and not for the better, Shimbaugh, a leading international authority on China, says in the new book Tangled Titans: The United States and China.

In the book, which he edited, he states that leaders in both countries should learn to manage competition and expand cooperation.