You could well see some companies decide with their next four plants to put three in China and one in India where three or four years ago they would have built all four in China.

The President himself is frankly more than a little irritated and would like to see a lot of cooperation from Taiwan.

Everyone else sees the substantive issues. But you spend endless hours working on all the other stuff: Who’s going to get invited to the state dinner?

Broadly speaking, this is an approach they’ve used before. You shut down a publication and move out of key positions the people that cause you the most concern. In the process, you send a shot...

Is there something you can do where you can say this is the first time that the president has done this with a famous leader?

Taiwan is probably the most dangerous situation in East Asia at this point,

His position now almost requires that he become China’s chief advocate for the rule of law and for limitations on the power of the Chinese Communist Party.

In terms of the overall impact on the visit, it’s small potatoes.

This is really the only place in East Asia where I think there is a real possibility that we could see military conflict in the next couple of years if things go badly.

We should both be on the same side of the table vis-a-vis global oil markets.

We believe that the U.S. can increase China’s confidence about its intentions by taking the lead to build China more effectively into multilateral energy regimes.

They’re not going to time their activities to the American sense of what’s right.

China is having a tough time figuring out what the language is to allow them to back off.

The White House wants to establish democracy everywhere. That [concept] is anathema to the Chinese, because it’s effectively saying: ‘Our goal is to overthrow you, to change your system’.

I don’t think it’s going to produce any fundamental change. This is still an autocratic system. There are things that they just don’t want the public to know about.

you had the sense that they were there to tee up a real negotiation.