When playing up the mutually beneficial aspects of economic cooperation between the U.S. and China, many theorists often ignore the competitive and destabilizing elements introduced by structural economic concerns. The struggle for emerging markets and untapped resources is adversarial, and it may intensify as economic growth slows.

The downturn of global financial and foreign exchange markets, is causing concerns in the Americas. A Chinese trade and investment focus on the “Pacific Pumas” would be a prudent strategy and help reduce tensions and suspicions between the U.S. and China in the region.

A long-term stable RMB exchange rate with a two-way volatility is conducive to maintaining the financial asset price, to preventing a large-scale capital outflow, to controlling foreign-debt risk, to reducing the cost and burden of debt financing and to stabilizing economic growth anticipation.

As China allows more market influence to determine the value of the RMB, the exchange rate will become more volatile. Allowing the market to determine the value of the yuan is precisely what the West has long sought, and it will serve global interests, whether China’s currency rises or falls.

Tectonic shifts are occurring in the economy, financial markets, geopolitical strategy, and social policy. The ultimate test may well lie in managing the exceedingly complex interplay among these developments. Is China’s leadership up to the task, or has it bitten off too much at once?

Washington’s goals in the Trans-Pacific Partnership may have been economic at first, but the most recent negotiations suggest the trade agreement has become a tool of the US ‘pivot to Asia’. A symptom of its quest to contain China, it’s an unworthy goal for the US – and it’s doomed to fail.

Support for Chinese investment has been declining in Canada, particularly because of the concentration of investments in the resource sector. However, attitudes toward Asia can change, depending on the context, the question, and extraneous elements such as negative media coverage of domestic and international events.

Concerns about the wealth gap and debt service linger to keep the US economy from growing at its full potential.

More than 60 countries and institutions have embraced President Xi Jinping’s call for connectivity programs both within Asia and between Asia and Europe, both by land and by the sea, to strengthen traditional infrastructure and build highways of trade, finance, and cultural exchange.

It’s my great pleasure to be invited to speak at the Singapore-China Business Forum. Let me commend the organizers for taking this timely and important theme.