The Bush administration's policy towards China faced the difficult task of sustaining the cooperative US-China relationship in the context of China's rise. China's success in economic development since the 1979 reforms had allowed Beijing to transform growing Chinese material wealth into political and military power. Robert Zoellick, serving in Bush's cabinet as US Trade Representative and Deputy Secretary of State, once underlined that “China is big, it is growing, and it will influence the world in the years ahead. At the end of his second term, President Bush had successfully managed to establish significant elements of US-China cooperation and build a record of cooperation with a rising China while achieving US national interests. During his presidential campaign, George W. Bush revealed his disagreement with the Clinton administration’s view of China as “a competitor, not a strategic partner. While seeing China as a power in transition and asserting that if China became a friend of the US, “that friendship will steady the world. But if not, the peace we seek may not be found”, George W. Bush warned that China would be “respected as a great power ... unthreatened, but not unchecked”, under his administration.