“Made in China,” says so many of our mass-produced belongings.

There’s not an economics class you could attend without talk of U.S. and China relations. But for non-business majors, it may be hard hard to realize the significance. This is why Daniel Fung, former solicitor general of Hong Kong, is coming to lecture today.

Almost one-third of the United States’ trillion-dollar trade deficit is owed to China, America’s second largest trade partner behind Canada.

“Our relationship with China is the most important economic relationship right now,” said C. Donald Johnson, director of the Dean Rusk Center. China has the fastest growing economy in the world right now. Because of this, they are starting to make investments in the US, meaning we are important to them as well.

Unfortunately, oftentimes students are very unaware of the implications for our own lives. “I know we get a lot of stuff from China, but it doesn’t really affect my daily life,” Megan Simmons, a junior Biology major from Savannah, said.

Andrew Barnes, a junior religion major from Loganville, has a similar perspective. “I know it’s important, but I just don’t think about it that much. It crosses my mind when I see the labels, but that’s about as far as it goes,” he said.

With this much lot of money at stake, there is potential for conflict. If China wanted to cash in on the money the U.S. owes them, things could get tricky.

Fung sees the glass as half-full, though.

“I see major challenges ahead but I remain fundamentally optimistic on Sino-US relations in the long term because relations between China and the United States today have never been stronger than at any time since the founding of the People’s Republic of China 60 years ago,” he said.

Optimism feels good in a time when everyone’s eyes are China. What happens in these next ten years may drastically change the way the world’s governments are set up.

Fung will be giving his personal insight on the financial issues between the US and China that exist today. He has been a government official in Hong Kong and a national delegate to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. His accolades include Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, Senior Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School and Distinguished Fulbright Scholar for Hong Kong to the United States in 2000.