Search
Close this search box.
Issue Brief
May 20, 2024

L.E.A.D. Project Brief

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken walks around Shanghai, China at night on April 26, 2024.
(Source: Official State Department photo by Chuck Kennedy, Public Domain)

Ties Stabilize While Negative Undercurrents Deepen

ISSUE BRIEF BY:

Picture of Sourabh Gupta
Sourabh Gupta

Resident Senior Fellow

This article is extracted from Comparative Connections: A Triannual E-Journal of Bilateral Relations in the Indo-Pacific, Vol. 26, No. 1, May 2024. Preferred citation: Sourabh Gupta, “US-China Relations: Ties Stabilize While Negative Undercurrents Deepen,” Comparative Connections, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp 39-54.

On This Page

Summary

US-China relations were marked by a paradox during the first trimester of 2024. On the one hand, a distinct stabilization was evident in ties. The two sides made concerted efforts to translate their leaders’ ‘San Francisco Vision’ into reality. Cabinet officials exchanged visits across the Pacific, working groups and dialogue mechanisms met in earnest and produced outcomes, functional cooperation was deepened, sensitive issues such as Taiwan were carefully managed, and effort was devoted to improving the relationship’s political optics. On the other hand, the negative tendencies in ties continued to deepen. Both sides introduced additional selective decoupling as well as cybersecurity measures in key information and communications technology and services sectors, with US actions bearing the signs of desinicization—rather than mere decoupling—of relevant supply chains. The chasm in strategic perception remained as wide as before. In sum, the “new normal” in US-China relations continued to take form, one piece at a time.

What a difference a year makes. At this time in late-April last year, the US and China were barely communicating, still smarting from the balloon incident of February 2023. It was not until US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and CPC Central Foreign Affairs Commission Director Wang Yi met in Vienna in mid-May 2023 that a semblance of normality began to be restored to the relationship. Twelve months on, there has been an almost across-the-board restoration of communication channels, a deepening of functional cooperation across issues areas, and a concerted effort to manage the political optics of the relationship for the better – this, despite deep differences in strategic perception between the two sides.

Locking Down Stabilization One Meeting at a Time

The first four months of 2024 witnessed a flurry of in-person meetings of Cabinet and principals-level officials. On Jan. 18, US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack met counterpart Tang Renjian in Washington, DC, marking the first meeting of their Joint Committee on Cooperation in Agriculture since 2015. Eight days later, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Director Wang Yi held 12 hours of talks over two days in Bangkok, their third extended round of conversations following meetings in Vienna (March 2023) and Malta (September 2023). At the meeting, a decision to launch a bilateral working group on counternarcotics and an inter-governmental dialogue mechanism on artificial intelligence (AI) later this spring was reached. On Feb.18, China’s Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong met US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in Vienna to advance law enforcement cooperation in the fights against fentanyl as well as online child sexual exploitation. The harassment of Chinese students at US border entry points was also raised by Wang.

In early April, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen returned to Beijing to establish two dedicated workstreams in conjunction with her Chinese Finance Ministry and People’s Bank of China (PBoC) counterparts—an Intensive Exchange on Balanced Growth in the Domestic and Global Economies under the aegis of their bilateral Economic Working Group (EWG), and a Joint Treasury-PBoC Cooperation and Exchange on Anti-Money Laundering (AML) under their Financial Working Group (FWG). The former workstream is informed by concerns of excess Chinese capacity in key new industries such as solar, electric vehicles (EV) and lithium-ion batteries, and bears resemblance to the Strategic Impediments Initiative (SII) that the US and Japan devised three-and-a-half decades ago to tackle the structural drivers—many of them in the domestic regulatory policy realm—that Washington believed was behind the large trade imbalance between the two sides. Beijing denies the overcapacity charge in the EV sector, pointing out that 12% of Chinese-made EV’s are exported compared to 80, 50, and 25% of autos for Germany, Japan and the US, respectively.

On April 24-26, 10 months after he had set the ball rolling with his ice-breaking visit, Secretary of State Antony Blinken returned to Beijing to hold “candid and constructive” conversations with President Xi, Foreign Minister Wang and Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong. The composition of senior departmental officials accompanying Blinken was instructive of his priorities: counternarcotics cooperation and AI. It included Todd Robinson, assistant secretary for Intl. Narcotics and Law Enforcement, and Nathaniel Fick, ambassador for Cyberspace and Digital Policy (in addition to Dan Kritenbrink, the asst. secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs). On global affairs, China’s transfer of dual-use items to plug critical gaps in Russia’s defense production cycle and thereby support Moscow’s operations in Ukraine was the foremost topic of discussion. In Beijing, Blinken threatened his Chinese interlocutors with secondary sanctions on its banking sector, should they facilitate ‘significant transactions’ on behalf of entities that provide specific manufacturing inputs and technologies to Russia’s military-industrial base. That Beijing is attentive to this threat can be gauged from the fact that following the issuance of Biden’s December 2023 Executive Order authorizing the imposition of US secondary sanctions on foreign financial institutions, three of China’s largest banks – Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC); China Construction Bank (CCB); Bank of China—stopped accepting payments from sanctioned Russian financial institutions. After Blinken’s departure, a number of Chinese and Hong Kong entities that supply drones, infrared detectors, microelectronics, sensors and microcontrollers, and nitrocellulose (to make propellants) for Russia’s war machine were slapped with property-blocking sanctions by the Treasury Department. No Chinese banks were included in the current round of sanctions.

On Taiwan, both Blinken and his counterpart spelt out their respective “one China” policy and “one China” principle, and counseled restraint. With a presidential election in January on the self-governing island and with the inauguration of a deeper-green president looming in May, both sides conveyed their bottom lines while maintaining fidelity to the cross-strait status quo. Though Beijing had snapped back at Washington’s congratulatory statement in January following the DPP candidate Lai Ching-te’s victory and snapped again following US support for Taiwan’s participation as an observer at the World Health Assembly later in May, the CCP’s Taiwan Affairs Work Conference in end-February and the PRC Government Work Report of early-March stuck to the standard theme of “peaceful development of cross-strait relations” and “advancing integrated cross-strait development.” Sanctions were imposed though on five US defense industry companies for arms sales to Taiwan.

A panda lounging in a tree at the San Diego Zoo in Dec. 2014. (Credit: MattCC716 via Flickr, CC2.0)

In addition to these in-person meetings, two notable meetings were conducted virtually. On April 2, President Biden and President Xi took stock of the progress as well as continuing deep differences in ties since their November 2023 summit in California. Biden reemphasized that the US does not seek a new Cold War; does not seek to change China’s system; the revitalization of its alliances is not directed at China; does not support Taiwan independence; and does not seek conflict with China. For his part, Xi has sought to follow through on his people-to-people pledges, and leaven the political tone of the US-China relationship at a time when a whopping 80%-plus of Americans hold an unfavorable view of the People’s Republic. In February, the China Wildlife Conservation Association and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Association signed an agreement to return two giant pandas to the San Diego Zoo later this summer—the first time in more than two decades that pandas will be returning to the US. A letter of intent with the San Francisco Zoological Society was also signed on April 19. On March 27, Xi met with representatives of the US business community at the Great Hall of the People—his first meeting with a visiting US business delegation since September 2015. And in his continuation of “letter diplomacy,” Xi exchanged missives with friends and students from Muscatine, Iowa, where he had visited, stayed, and cherished fond memories from 39 years ago. Allowable weekly round-trip passenger flights between the two countries have also inched up to 50, from 12 per week in August 2023, to 18 in September, to 24 in end-October, to 35 in late-November 2023. Prior to COVID-19, the number had exceeded 150 per week.

The other notable video meeting was between the two defense chiefs. On April 16, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III held his first talks since November 2022 with a PRC Minister of National Defense (Adm. Dong Jun), with Taiwan and the South China Sea tensions being the key topics of discussion. A day later, a Navy P-8A Poseidon patrol and reconnaissance plane conducted a relatively rare Taiwan Strait transit in international airspace. Earlier, in January and in early-April, the 17th Defense Policy Coordination Talks (DPCT), an annual deputy assistant secretary level policy dialogue, and the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA) talks, a working-level operational safety dialogue between US INDOPACOM and PLA naval and air forces, were held. Defense communication channels appear to be reverting to normal and instances of China’s risky aerial intercepts are down significantly. In fair likelihood, the two countries’ defense chiefs will hold their first in-person meeting on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in end-May—the first in-person contact since the post-balloon incident easing cycle in ties began last summer. Separately, the US was among 29 navies gathered at the Western Pacific Naval Symposium (WPNS) in Qingdao, China, where an updated Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) and the forming of a Working Group on Unmanned Systems were adopted.

Deepening Functional Cooperation by Plucking the Low-Hanging Fruit

In the run-up to the November 2023 summit in Woodside, the Chinese and US climate envoys had released a (rare) joint statement committing both countries to deeper cooperation on methane reductions. To consolidate the momentum in ties, the two presidents agreed at their meeting to establish a working group on counternarcotics cooperation and convene an intergovernmental dialogue mechanism to address the risks of advanced artificial intelligence systems. Varying progress was made on both fronts.

Counternarcotics Cooperation, including on fentanyl control

In Woodside, the Biden administration had agreed to delist the Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science from its Entity List, as part of an arrangement to establish a counternarcotics working group and effectuate concrete actions to stem the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals into North America. In the run-up to that summit, China’s National Narcotics Control Commission had sent out notices to Chinese chemical companies warning of potential criminal liability for selling chemicals for the production of narcotics, including those listed in the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of chemicals of concern.

Following the summit, China began reporting incidents for the first time in three years to the International Narcotics Control Board database used by law enforcement authorities to track and intercept shipments. At their Counternarcotics Working Group meeting in late-January, the two sides agreed to clamp down on Chinese pill press exports (which enable the production of potentially lethal fentanyl-laced fake pills) and share best practices with regard to closing money laundering loopholes. The January meeting was attended by representatives from Chinese banks, including the Bank of China. The US has sought tougher prosecution and sentencing of those accused of selling precursor chemicals and related equipment, as well as expeditious follow-through by Beijing on the scheduling of all chemical precursors controlled by the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs. China has sought to have its listing as a ‘major drug source country’ removed. The Biden administration placed Beijing on its annual list of major drug-producing or transit countries in September 2023.

Artificial Intelligence dialogue

On March 21, the US and China along with more than 120 countries supported a landmark resolution on the promotion of “safe, secure and trustworthy” AI systems that would benefit the sustainable development of all. A month later, during Secretary Blinken’s visit to Beijing, the two countries formally announced the 1st US-China talks on AI, due to be held in the coming weeks. The purpose of the talks is to better understand respective views and approaches to managing the risks associated with AI applications, and to communicate about areas of concern. Both countries are in the process of developing guidelines, standards and best practices for AI safety and security, and are involved too in the advancement of global technical standards for AI development. Topics being addressed include best practices regarding data capture, processing, management, and analysis; best practices for AI model training; guidelines and standards for trustworthiness, verification, and assurance of AI systems; AI risk management and governance systems; as well as application-specific standards (e.g., for facial recognition technology), among others. That said, structuring the US-China conversation on AI will not be easy.

The primary focus of the bilateral conversation, from Washington’s point of view, is to develop common approaches on the development and control of high-risk frontier AI models. Beijing’s preference, on the other hand, is that the bilateral conversation be focused on the cooperative development of AI. The Biden administration has no interest in such a conversation; to the contrary, the administration has placed onerous export control restrictions on leading-edge GPU’s (graphics processing units) to prevent China from training its frontier AI models. At the Bletchley Park AI summit last November, at which China was among two dozen-odd countries represented, the US even ensured that Chinese companies were excluded from the testing of frontier models at the AI safety institutes set up by the US and UK. This begs the question how risks, standards, and regulations on frontier models can be individually or mutually evaluated and established. On the military side of things, meanwhile, one of the working group’s aim is to establish certain rules-of-the-road to ensure that unsupervised AI is not allowed to dictate command-and-control of critical weapon systems, particularly those related to the use of a nuclear weapon. Regulating the use of AI in fully autonomous weaponry is another potential focus area. That said, neither side as yet deploys frontier AI models to guide critical military operations-related applications—which, in turn, begs the question as to who would even represent either side on military AI at the discussion table. As the working group convenes, these and other questions remain to be answered.

Science & Technology Agreement (STA) Extension

The STA was the first major agreement signed by the two governments following the re-establishment of diplomatic relations in January 1979. This framework agreement, which covers around 30 agency-level protocols and 40 sub-agreements that cover the gamut from agriculture, basic science, biomedical research, marine sciences and remote sensing to nuclear fusion and safety, provides the mutual confidence that sustains and underpins cross-border research collaborations. Last renewed in 2018 and extended for six months in August 2023, the STA was quietly extended for another six-month interval in late-February 2024 while negotiations on its renewal continue. From the standpoint of modernizing the agreement, several sticking points remain. These include the personal safety of scientists who travel to China; their ability to access, share and carry data across China’s borders at this time of tight data security rules; concerns regarding IP theft; and concerns about a lack of reciprocity, transparency and a level playing field in terms of access for US scientists in China.

The Chinese side has its own interests and concerns too, not least among them being the poaching of its scientists by the US. A dispute settlement framework also needs to be worked out. That said, the Biden administration’s decision to successively extend the STA—albeit temporarily, when it could easily have played to the political gallery and let the agreement expire—signifies a willingness to engage China as a scientific near-peer than purely as a target of suppression.

A Deepening Spiral of Decoupling-linked Actions

In his phone conversation with Biden on April 2, Xi Jinping lamented that even as the US-China relationship was beginning to stabilize, the “negative factors of the relationship [were] also growing.” The two sides needed to first get the “issue of strategic perception” right, “just like the first button that must be put right.” That first button is not likely to be worn as per Xi’s liking. The Biden administration’s approach, as it has stated many times, is to invest (in itself), align (with allies and partners), and compete (with China), and only thereafter manage the competition from veering into conflict while also seeking out areas of cooperation.

During the first trimester of 2024, such competitive actions foremost in the advanced technologies and cybersecurity sphere remained the dominant trend. The whiff of protectionist-leaning trade policy announcements that cater to blue collar voters in toss-up electoral college states was evident too. Beijing was no shrinking violet either; it implemented countermeasures as well as self-introduced de-risking actions during this period.

Cybersecurity concerns involving China have long risen to the fore in US politics and national security. In February, FBI Director Christopher Wray delivered a blistering critique at the Munich Security Conference of China’s pre-positioning of malware within critical infrastructure systems. While Wray and the Justice Department have not always been on the money on China (witness the implosion of the “China Initiative” cases and the failure to make trade secrets theft charges stick against Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co.), his critique was a prelude to three Biden administration Executive Orders in the space of 10 days on China-linked cybersecurity concerns. On Feb. 21, an EO that addresses cyber-vulnerabilities linked to ship-to-shore cranes produced in China was rolled out, following reports as well as a congressional investigation that such cranes deployed at more than 200 US ports contained remotely accessible communications equipment (cellular modems) that was unneeded for normal operations. On Feb. 28, an EO accompanied by a 90-page Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) that is designed to restrict “foreign adversaries” access to Americans’ bulk sensitive personal data was released.

The ANPRM constitutes the first instance of the regulation of the personal data of Americans for national security reasons, rather than for privacy or other reasons. Its drivers stem as far back as the Anthem healthcare data breach of 2015, probably by Chinese operators, with the concern being that the stolen personal data from various sources of US citizens can be aggregated – utilizing big-data analytics, AI and data-brokers—and employed thereafter as a tool of blackmail and coercion. And tucked-in also on Feb. 28 was an EO and accompanying ANPRM that seeks to strip out foreign adversary content from key electric vehicle software systems – vehicle operating system; telematics systems; automated driving systems; advanced driver assistance systems; battery management systems; satellite/cellular telecoms system—that could potentially be commandeered by an adversary state to inflict a distributed denial of service attack on US intelligent transport systems, communication hardware, or critical infrastructure.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang meets with Elon Musk, CEO of the U.S. electric carmaker Tesla, in Beijing, capital of China, April 28, 2024. (Photo by Wang Ye/Xinhua via Getty Images)

China went in a different direction on cyber concerns during the first trimester of 2024. On April 28, Tesla’s EV Model 3 and Model Y cleared four Cyberspace Administration of China’s (CAC)-recommended data security assessments related to the collection, processing, and management of data, paving the way for the lifting of access restrictions at sensitive locations, such as government compounds and airports. Earlier, on March 22, CAC issued an order rolling back restrictive regulations on the export of personal information and other sensitive data from China to facilitate the cross-border flow of data for business purposes.

Countering the potential for dissemination of disinformation by foreign adversaries, even be it subliminally, has been a US priority since the 2016 presidential election. To this end, on April 24, President Biden signed a bill, as part of a larger foreign aid package, that bans the popular short video-sharing app TikTok in the US if its China-based parent ByteDance fails to divest the app within 12 months. The Justice Department is authorized to enforce the ban on national security grounds. TikTok has vowed to challenge the law citing First Amendment protections. Its chances of success are high. Courts across the country and up to the Supreme Court have ruled that mere invocation of a national security threat based on supposition is insufficient to justify the squelching of First Amendment rights. The threat must be real, and a proposed ban shown to be an unavoidable option to address this threat. TikTok must be shown to have aligned its algorithm with Beijing’s disinformation efforts at the latter’s behest or coercion and likely to do so again, if such a ban is to be sustained. Neither the Trump White House in 2020 (which had ordered ByteDance to divest from TikTok) nor the foreign aid package bill today can likely mount this evidentiary threshold.

Relatedly, in late-August 2020, China’s Commerce Ministry had updated its list of “forbidden and restricted technology exports” to include “personalized information recommendation services based on data analysis”—in effect, meaning that ByteDance would need government approval (which would not be forthcoming) to effectuate a divestiture. That injunction remains just as applicable today. On the other hand, what is good for the goose does not seemingly apply to the gander, insofar as Beijing is concerned. In mid-April, while the TikTok bill was under consideration, it was reported that CAC had ordered Apple to remove popular Western chat messaging apps WhatsApp and Threads (as well as messaging platforms Signal and Telegram) from its app store on “national security” grounds. Mobile app developers had been required to register their apps with the Chinese government by April 1; as such, more app removals could follow in the coming weeks.

Strategic trade controls in the area of information and communications technologies and services (ICTS) has been ground zero in the US-China contest for tech supremacy, starting with the expansive ICTS Executive Order of May 2019 which initiated the process of kneecapping Huawei. On January 29, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued a Proposed Rule that would compel US cloud companies to implement ‘know-your-customer’ procedures and alert the government when foreign clients train their most powerful AI models using the compute power provided by these cloud companies. The rule has been met with pushback from stakeholders. On Jan. 31, the US Defense Department released its updated list of 1260H “Chinese Military Companies” that “operate directly or indirectly in the United States.” While the legal impact of the designation is limited, it carries larger reputational risks for companies and could open them up to more severe sanctions later. On March 29, BIS issued its Interim Final Rule that revises elements of its punishing October 2022 and October 2023 rules aimed at restricting China’s ability to obtain advanced computing chips, develop and maintain supercomputers, and manufacture advanced node semiconductors. And in late-April, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ordered the US units of China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile and Pacific Networks Corporation to discontinue their Internet “Points of Presence” (POPs) operations that offer colocation, broadband, IP transit and data center services on American soil.

Having absorbed blow-after-blow of US technology denial measures, China, too, continued to impose countermeasures during the first trimester of 2024. In March, new procurement guidelines were introduced to phase out foreign operating systems, microprocessors and database software from government PCs and servers. In late-December 2023, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology had issued introduced new “safe and reliable” criteria for processors and operating systems and on the same day, the China Information Technology Security Evaluation Center, the state testing agency, had published its first list of “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems—all locally produced. The muscling out of US technology from the state sector dates back to a directive issued in September 2022. Separately, China’s trade controls on graphite products continue to bite. Noting China’s lock on the spherical graphite and synthetic graphite supply chains—critical minerals key to the production of batteries, the US Treasury Department recently relaxed its clean vehicle tax credit-related sourcing rules in their regard for an additional two years until 2027.

Finally, the start of 2024 witnessed the return of the threat of aggravated trade frictions in US-China relations. The first shot of this new great power rivalry had been fired, it bears remembering, in the trade policy arena, when the Trump administration introduced Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum and Section 301 tariffs on $370 billion of Chinese goods in Summer 2018. With an eye on the battleground Rust Belt states in the 2024 election (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin’s combined 77,736 vote margin was key to Trump’s victory in 2016; had 257,025 ballots been cast in his favor in these states, Trump would have remained in office in 2020), Biden called for a tripling of tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum and a Section 301 probe into China’s shipbuilding, maritime, and logistics practices. A port fee on Chinese-built ships that dock at US ports is sought to be assessed, which would be plowed into a Shipbuilding Revitalization Fund to revive the domestic industry.

Separately, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced that her review of Section 301 tariffs on China that began in September 2022 is nearing completion, timed to land in the middle of campaign season. And all along, US Cabinet secretaries continued to beat the drum on Chinese overcapacity in key green goods sectors: solar, EVs, lithium-ion batteries. The accusation is not without merit. Although China is moving away from its excess investment-led growth model, the underlying level of domestic savings remains excessively high. As such, the fear that these savings (and domestic under-consumption) will macroeconomically manifest itself in the form of domestic overproduction that is dumped overseas in export markets is real. And because a component of this overproduction is the product of industrial subsidies, this would amount to unfair trade-distorting competition in international markets.

Suniva CEO Matt Card (2nd from the Left) speaks to US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (Center) as she visits solar cell company Suniva in Norcross, Georgia, on March 27, 2024. (Photo by CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA / AFP) (Photo by CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA/AFP via Getty Images)

Beijing continues to resist this characterization pointing to its competitiveness in these industries. And, it initiated pre-case consultations with the US at the WTO regarding the latter’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) clean vehicle tax credits, which it alleges is a noncomplaint trade subsidy measure. On April 26, China’s National People’s Congress also passed a revised Customs Law, as part of a codification of tax practices, that includes a new authorization for the State Council to impose retaliatory tariffs (Article 18). And in late-April, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced new anti-dumping tariffs of up to 43.5% on imports of US propionic acid, a chemical additive used in animal feed and pesticides. Although the amounts involved are small, the measure is a shot across the bow given that Beijing had been reticent to escalate the already-high trade tensions.

Conclusion

The “new normal” in US-China relations continues to take shape, one piece at a time. The ‘new normal’ is not a ‘new Cold War’ as some have posited—although there is a palpable Cold War-style, zero-sum equation settling into their competition to dominate the high-technology and advanced manufacturing industries of tomorrow. Nor is the “new normal” merely a more contentious version of the mix of engagement and competition that characterized their four decade-long post-normalization period of ties. Strategic competition between the US and China is real and, if mismanaged, could drift into rivalry and across-the-board conflict—both hot and cold. That said, there is no one typology of interaction that cuts across the “baskets” of US-China issues; the two countries’ interactions, rather, span the range from the icy to the lukewarm. The two countries’ labor ministers have never met (the US insists that genocide and forced labor continues to be carried out in Xinjiang) and US Trade Representative Katherine Tai has yet to show up in-person in Beijing and explain her administration’s stance on the Section 301 China tariffs—now judged by a WTO panel to be unlawfully imposed. Positioned toward the latter end of the spectrum is their cooperation on climate change as well as Washington’s and Beijing’s engagement on bilateral and multilateral macroeconomic and financial issues, helmed by their Economic and Financial Working Groups. A complex relationship demands complex choices, built as much on ideology and values as it is on realism and objectivity.

In an article in Foreign Affairs in August 2019, 18 months before they assumed their role as architects of the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific policy, Jake Sullivan and Kurt Campbell wrote of the imperative to establish a “clear-eyed coexistence [with China] on terms favorable to US interests and values.” America could, and should, both challenge and coexist with China. In Spring 2024, the spelling out of the terms of that ‘clear-eyed coexistence’ remains a work in progress, while Beijing continues to pursue its interests reactively within this framework.

— Chronology of US - China Relations —

January – April 2024

This chronology was prepared by Jessica Martin, ICAS Research Associate.