I have just returned from several days in Beijing, where I joined seven other Brookings colleagues in a series of meetings with academics, entrepreneurs and senior government officials for conversations about the state of U.S.-China relations. Nearly all of our conversations addressed the sharp and surprising downward turn that the bilateral relationship has taken in recent months, with mounting tensions spanning a wide range of issues from maritime disputes to cyber security.

Conversations often turned to the "New Type of Great Power Relations," a framework for U.S.-China relations that, since last year's meeting between Presidents Obama and Xi, has become a kind of mutually endorsed shorthand for the type of bilateral relationship that will be necessary if both countries are to work together effectively on the world stage in the coming decades. But it remains unclear exactly what such a relationship would entail, and how-if at all–it would differ from both the current model of bilateral relations and the relationships that China and the United States enjoy with other countries.