Jeffrey A. Bader, who served as senior director for East Asian affairs on the National Security Council in the early years of the Obama administration, has spent much of his career in public service. He joined the U.S. State Department in 1977 as a staff assistant to Richard Holbrooke and worked as an assistant U.S. Trade Representative, helping to negotiate the accession of China to the World Trade Organization in 2001. Today, he is the John C. Whitehead senior fellow with the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. He is also the author of Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider's Account of America’s Asia Strategy. We spoke to Bader about America’s deteriorating relationship with China, and prospects for U.S.-China policy under the Biden administration. What follows is a lightly edited Q&A. Jeffrey Bader.Illustration by Kate Copeland Q: Can we begin with how U.S.-China relations looked after you joined the Obama administration in January 2009, as sen