Ambassador Burns’ views on China are in many respects in line with President Biden’s. He acknowledges the importance of managing competition with China, but rejects the idea that the competition is eventually becoming a total confrontation between the two countries. He published an article on The Atlantic called for a reinvention of the American foreign policy, in which he suggested an approach that aligns with Biden’s multilateral approach, “Preventing China’s rise is beyond America’s capacity, and our economies are too entangled to decouple. The U.S. can, however, shape the environment into which China rises, taking advantage of the web of allies and partners across the Indo-Pacific … That will require working with them—and engaging Chinese leadership directly—to bound rivalry with Beijing, define the terms for coexistence, prevent competition from becoming a collision, and preserve space for cooperation on global challenges.” The pro-multilateralist approach on China is also reflected in his published essay on Foreign Affairs at the end of 2020, in which he called for U.S. diplomacy to “accept the country’s diminished, but still pivotal, role in global affairs”, to “mobilize coalitions to deal with transnational challenges and ensure greater resilience in American society to the inevitable shocks of climate change, cyberthreats, and pandemics”, and to “organize wisely for geopolitical competition with China.”