Since the events of Tiananmen Square in June 1989, much has happened in the world, in China, and between China and the United States. Robert L. Suettinger, a former national intelligence officer for East Asia on the National Intelligence Council and director of Asian Affairs on the National Security Council, claims that time has healed many of the wounds caused by the massacre of pro-democracy students and the memory of the horrors that took place there have faded away. Relations between Beijing and Washington in the past 14 years have gone from amity to strategic cooperation, to hostility, distrust, and misunderstanding. The capital of Beijing has also changed. In the square that witnessed bloodshed and the death, new hotels, tall buildings and high offices have been built. Many Western companies are advertising their products in the famous square. Beijing is also showing the dynamism of its economy, as it prepares for the 2008 Summer Olympics Games. What has happened since June 1989 is reported in details and analyzed by the author, as China goes through the process of transforming itself into an economic power, and its leaders are reforming the country's system to adjust to modern realities. Globalization and China's admission into the World Trade Organization are having an impact.

Since 1989, one significant event has been the 1995-1996 crisis over Taiwan's democratic presidential election. On March 5, 1996, Beijing announced that the PLA planned to launch a "ground-to-ground missile launch training" in the Taiwan Strait, close to the Taiwanese ports of Chilung and Kaohsiung. Suettinger says the missile tests were a miscalculation because the missiles were considered a "terror weapon," a bullying tactic by Beijing. The US reaction was at first contained, as Washington merely warned of consequences. However, when Chinese missiles were fired, tensions mounted. The White House, under then President Bill Clinton, and his security advisers dispatched two carrier battle groups: the USS Independence and the USS Nimitz. The deployment of the two carriers was communicated to Ding Mou-shih, who was secretary general of Taiwan's National Security Council, in a secret meeting in New York City by Clinton's national security adviser. Ding was also reminded that the Clinton administration desired good relations with Beijing, and that Taiwan and China should resolve their differences peacefully. The missile tests did not deter the elections in Taiwan, and Lee Teng-hui won the presidency in the first popular election in any Chinese territory. Things seemed to return to normal. Washington then realized that Taiwan and its relationship with the mainland was by far the most significant issue in the relationship between Washington and Beijing.

Various other developments marked the difficult ties between China and the US in 1997 and 1998, including alleged payments by the Chinese community to the electoral campaign for Vice President Al Gore, the issue of intellectual property and charges of Chinese spying and buying of nuclear secrets. President Jiang Zemin visited the US and held talks with Clinton. Clinton's visit to China was the first by a US president since Tiananmen. Then came the US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade on May 7, 1999, an accident that shook the Chinese leadership and ties between the two sides.

The year 1999 marked another Taiwan crisis, which sent US-Chinese ties downward in the wake of the bombing in Belgrade. Lee Teng-hui declared in an interview that cross-strait relations will be a "state-to-state relationship, or at least a special state-to-state relationship," and not a relationship between a central government and a local government. Suettinger said Lee's declaration hit the US-China relationship and cross-strait relationship "like another precision-guided bomb."

Suettinger concludes: "US-China relations since Tiananmen have been dominated by problems."