Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

For six years, my guest today was President Obama's top advisor on the Asia-Pacific region

inside the National Security Council.

In other words, Evan Medeiros played a crucial role in America's handling of the bilateral relationship

that will do much to shape the geopolitics

of the 21st century, that between Washington and Beijing. Mr. Obama famously declared that

China's peaceful rise is good for the world and good for America. He and his team criticized Beijing on a range of trade and human rights

issues, but the emphasis was on improving cooperation rather than intensifying hostility. But the Trump

years have changed all that. From trade to Taiwan, the U.S. has come to identify China as the

key strategic threat. And the course appears to identify China as the key strategic threat,

and the course appears to be set for an era of big power hostility,

which could, quite conceivably, end in military conflict.

How to handle China is now the central foreign policy challenge facing President Biden.

So who will he borrow more from? Obama or Trump?

Well, Evan Medeiros joins me now from Washington, D.C. Welcome to Hard Talk.

Great to be here, Stephen.

It's a pleasure to have you on the show. We, in particular, want to tap into your experience.

You were a very senior advisor to President Obama on China and

wider Asia Pacific region for several years. When you look back and you consider what is

happening now in China and to U.S.-China relations, can you say to me that President Obama

actually got it wrong on China?

Well, as a former policymaker, hindsight is always 2020.

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