The Sectionalism In U.S. Foreign Policy

China is the largest developing country while United States of America is the largest developed country in the world. They are both permanent members of the Security Council. They have a wide range of common interests in safeguarding world and regional peace and stability, promoting global economic development, preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, promoting cooperation in the Asia-Pacific regions, as well as fighting against international crime and other issues. Therefore, the Sino-US relation is the most important bilateral relation in the world. The future developments of bilateral relation not only affect the stability and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region, but also have a decisive impact on direction of the world political and economic future.There are lots of research works on Sino-US relations in China, but most of them explore the Sino-US relations on the federal government level which emphasize mainly on congress, interest groups, think tanks, and media and totally ignores the important factor of sectionalism in the U.S. politics and foreign policies. However, with the end of the Cold War, sectionalism is increasingly exerting influence on U.S. foreign policy-making.In the first chapter the thesis introduces the concept of sectionalism and the performance of sectionalism in American politics. The second chapter focuses on the reasons of American sectionalism. The author point out that assorted regional economy, cultural differences among diverse regions as well as the characteristics of the U.S. federal political system are three reasons of sectionalism. In the third chapter, the author use China's most-favored-nation position as case expounding the performance of sectionalism in Sino-US relations. The author finally put forward several suggestions to the Chinese government in dealing with the bilateral relations concerning American sectionalism.