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U.S. President Joe Biden (L) speaks with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru, November 16, 2024. (Photo by LEAH MILLIS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Resident Senior Fellow
This article is extracted from Comparative Connections: A Triannual E-Journal of Bilateral Relations in the Indo-Pacific, Vol. 26, No. 2, December 2024. Preferred citation: Sourabh Gupta, “US-China Relations: Trump’s Return Scrambles Outlook,” Comparative Connections, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp 39-58.
US-China relations through 2024 remained marked by a paradox. On the one hand, ties displayed a distinct stabilization. The two sides translated their leaders’ modest “San Francisco Vision” into reality. Cabinet officials and the numerous working groups met in earnest and produced outcomes, functional cooperation was deepened though differences emerged, sensitive issues were carefully managed, and effort was devoted to improving the relationship’s political optics. US electoral politics, or threat of Chinese interference in the elections, did not materially impinge on ties. On the other hand, the negative tendencies in US-China relations deepened. With its time in office winding down, the Biden administration went into regulatory overdrive to deepen the “selective decoupling” of the two countries’ advanced technology ecosystems. China methodically responded in kind using its now-robust economic lawfare toolkit. The chasm in strategic perceptions remained just as wide. Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office portends a period of disruptive unpredictability in ties, although “Tariff Man” Trump can reliably be expected to enact additional impositions on Chinese imports.
Two years to the day that they met on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia to place a floor under their troubled relationship and initiate a process of emplacing guardrails, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping met for their third in-person meeting as presidents in Lima, Peru, on the sidelines of the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting. In Lima, the two presidents took stock of the gradual rehabilitation of ties over the past two years, despite its early interruption by the balloon incident, and pledged to consolidate the fragile stability and make the relationship more predictable. They also patted themselves for harvesting some of the low-hanging fruit since their summit in Woodside, California, 12 months ago. US-China relations have made important incremental progress over the past 18 months, starting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing in June 2023 (Blinken returned to Beijing again this April). In Spring 2023, aside from meetings of their senior-most officials, there was practically no active communication channel between the two sides. Fast forward to today and there are more than 20 dialogue frameworks that span the range from diplomacy, security, economy, trade, fiscal affairs, finance and military to counternarcotics, law enforcement, agriculture, climate change, and people-to-people exchanges.
In Spring 2023, the US Treasury Department was sanctioning Chinese entities for their involvement in supplying chemical precursors to US-bound fentanyl trafficking networks. Today, 55 dangerous synthetic drugs and precursor chemicals have been class scheduled by Beijing, online platforms and pill presses shut down, and arrests connected to the illicit chemical industry made. Reciprocally, China’s Ministry of Public Security-linked Institute for Forensic Studies has been delisted from the Entity List—a rare case of an adversary state entity being delisted without any underlying change in the listed reason for its blacklisting.
In Spring 2023, US-China people-to-people as well as academic ties were frail, having suffered body blows stemming from the polemics associated with the origins of the COVID-19 virus and the Justice Department’s earlier “China Initiative.” There were only 12 weekly roundtrip passenger flights in service. Today, the two sides are on the verge of renewing their landmark Science and Technology Agreement (STA), the first major agreement to be signed by the two governments following the re-establishment of diplomatic relations in January 1979, pandas are returning to zoos in San Diego, Washington, DC and San Francisco, the number of roundtrip passenger flights has risen to 50 (prior to COVID-19, the number exceeded 150), and the health authorities of the two countries recently held their first ministerial-level dialogue in over seven years. The cases of “wrongfully detained” Americans have been resolved (although many others remain on exit bans), reciprocal repatriations of illegal migrants and fugitives have been conducted, and the Mainland’s Level 3 travel advisory status (Reconsider Travel) has been lowered to Level 2 (Exercise Increased Caution) by the State Department. For his part, President Xi has committed to inviting 50,000 young Americans to China on exchange and study over the next half-decade.
In Spring 2023, US-China climate change discussions—a mutually beneficial area of cooperation – were at a standstill and would only resume after the visit to Beijing by Special Climate Envoy John Kerry in July 2023. Today, the US-China bilateral Working Group on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s has met twice and, in keeping with their Sunnylands Statement of November 2023, the two parties jointly hosted a Methane and Other Non-CO2 Greenhouse Gases Summit at COP 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. In Spring 2023, the idea of hosting exchanges on AI hadn’t even been broached, even as US and Chinese organizations were moving forward with transformative breakthroughs in Generative AI. Today, the two sides have begun a constructive and candid policy dialogue on AI, co-sponsored each other’s resolutions on AI at the UN General Assembly, and affirmed the need to ensure that unsupervised AI must not allowed to dictate command-and-control of critical weapon system – especially the decision to use a nuclear weapon. The fear that China would be treated as a political football during the US election season or that it would interfere in the elections using disinformation operations did not materialize either (although there may have been interference in down-ballot races).
For all the positives that have flowed from their newly established or restarted dialogue frameworks, not all conversations ended in constructive outcomes. This is understandable. As the “new normal” in US-China relations takes shape, there is no one typology of interaction that can cut across the various “baskets” of US-China issues. A complex relationship demands complex choices that are built as much on ideology and values as much on interests, objectivity and realism.
The decision to restart mil-mil communications at the Biden-Xi Woodside summit in November 2023 was a bright spot in bilateral ties, to the extent that “jaw-jaw” is vastly preferable to “war-war.” Mil-mil ties had been suspended by China, it bears remembering, following Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in August 2022. This included the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA) talks, an operational safety dialogue between US INDOPACOM and PLA naval and air forces, which had convened regularly since 1998. The full range of institutionalized high-level mil-mil communications stand restored as of this writing.
In January and September 2024, the 17th and 18th editions of the Defense Policy Coordination Talks, an annual deputy assistant secretary level policy dialogue, were respectively conducted. The MMCA working group met earlier in April and again in November, and a theater commanders video-teleconference featuring the Commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command and the PLA’s Southern Theater Commander was held in early-September (the two met later in September at the Indo-Pacific Chiefs of Defense Conference in Hawaii). Topping these engagements was the first in-person meeting between the two countries’ defense chiefs, Secretary Lloyd and Minister Dong, in a year-and-a-half on the margins of the Shangri La Dialogue (SLD) in late-May. While both sides had tough words for the other in their SLD remarks, they also agreed to convene a crisis communications working group by the end of 2024. For added measure, National Security Advisor Sullivan was afforded the opportunity to meet the Vice-Chairman of the Party’s Central Military Commission (CMC), Zhang Youxia, during his late-August visit to Beijing, the first such NSA-CMC vice chair meet in eight years.
The mil-mil communications were wholesome but could not mask the wide chasm between the two sides on strategic arms-racing and deterrence concerns. It was reported in August that Biden had reoriented a highly classified US nuclear strategic plan, the Nuclear Employment Guidance, in March 2024 to account for an era of multiple nuclear-armed adversaries in the context of China’s rapidly growing nuclear arsenal. Whether linked or not, China discontinued the bilateral arms control and nonproliferation consultations in July (lamely using Taiwan arms sales card as an excuse) and, later that month, unleashed broadsides against AUKUS’ nuclear submarine cooperation pillar as well as NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements (it issued a No-first-use Nuclear Weapons Initiative too). It also conducted its first ICBM test in 44 years in late-September, with the projectile splashing down in the South Pacific. The US and China also clashed over the deployment of the Typhon Mid-Range Capability missile system in the Philippines. The US side cautioned the PLA for its dangerous, coercive, and escalatory tactics in the South China Sea which could trigger Article V of the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty; the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson admonished the US side for the first deployment of a strategic offensive weapon system outside its territory and in the Asia-Pacific since the end of the Cold War.
The Taiwan Question remained a bone of contention in US-China relations during the mid and latter part of 2024, to nobody’s surprise. In early-May, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson blasted Secretary Blinken’s encouragement as well as that of seven other allied nations to the WHO to invite Taiwan as an observer at the 77th World Health Assembly meeting. Later that month, the ministry spokesperson “deplore[d] and oppose[d]” Blinken’s note of felicitation to Lai Ching-te on his inauguration as president of the self-governing island. Lai had angered Beijing by noting that “the PRC and the ROC are not subordinate to each other” in his inaugural address. He was called out by name; treatment that took Beijing three years to mete out to his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen.
The Biden administration, for its part, was critical of the PLA’s Joint Sword 2024 A and B military exercises that were conducted in the wake of Lai’s inaugural address in May and his “Double Ten Day” address in October, respectively. Joint Sword 2024-A had focused on seizing the initiative in the Taiwan Strait battlefield, with the training content aimed at precision strikes on critical land, air and sea targets; Joint Sword 2024-B featuring the PLA Navy and the Coast Guard sought to execute a blockade of ports and other key locations. The exercises were denounced as “irresponsible, disproportionate and destabilizing.” The Biden administration also strongly condemned the June 2024 judicial guidelines issued by China’s Supreme People’s Court which imposes criminal punishments on “diehard Taiwan independence separatists” for conducting or inciting secession, noting that threats and legal warfare would not achieve peaceful resolution of cross-strait differences. And in conjunction with like-minded ANZUS, NATO and Japanese government allies, the US State Department sought to develop a common front to debunk China’s conflation and “mischaracterization” of UNGA Resolution 2758 with its “One China Principle.” China’s foreign ministry was having none of it, and political parties at the National Assembly in Taipei too were unable to arrive at a consensus on this point. All along, the Biden administration maintained a consistent clip of arms sales to the island, including by utilizing presidential drawdown authority, as well as periodic transits through the Taiwan Strait in international waters and airspace. China, for its part, built out its Taiwan arms sales-related list of sanctioned US parties under the framework of its Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law.
Tit-for-tat skirmishes between the two sides were not the whole story on the Taiwan Question. In Lima, Peru, Biden again assured his counterpart that the US does not support Taiwan independence (Xi had attempted—unsuccessfully—in Woodside to alter the phraseology to “oppose Taiwan independence’) and added that the US does not use the Taiwan card to compete or contain China. More broadly, Biden yet again reemphasized his “Five Noes’: that the US does not seek a Cold War with China; 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. Whether believed or not in Beijing, these assurances offer a steadying framework for future-oriented ties.
In an important speech in September 2022, NSA Jake Sullivan had listed three “families of technologies” —computing related technologies; biotechnologies and biomanufacturing; clean energy technologies—as “force multipliers” that would define the geopolitical landscape of the 21st century. Given their foundational nature, the US would seek to “maintain as large a lead as possible” over adversary nations, including by resorting to a “small yard, high fence” approach on strategic trade controls. Following the speech, the US Commerce Department issued an expansive regulation that instituted controls on China’s access to advanced computing chips as well as semiconductor manufacturing equipment essential to producing such chips.
With the clock winding down on its term in office, the Biden administration maintained its frenetic rulemaking pace, issuing a number of regulations in quick succession to deepen the “selective decoupling” of the two economies’ advanced technology ecosystems. On Sept. 23, the administration released a Proposed Rule to secure the supply chain for connected vehicles, which prohibits the import of Chinese hardware and software integrated into vehicle connectivity system (VCS) and software integrated into automated driving system (ADS). VCS is the set of systems that allow the vehicle to communicate externally, including telematics control units, Bluetooth, cellular, satellite, and Wi-Fi modules. The ADS includes the components that collectively allow a highly autonomous vehicle to operate without a driver behind the wheel. The Proposed Rule follows an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) issued earlier this February.
On Oct. 29, the US Justice Department issued a massive 422-page proposed rule to prevent access to Americans’ bulk sensitive personal data as well as government-related data by countries of concern, such as China. The rule proposes to establish a new national security-based regulatory regime governing the collection and transfer of personal data. Two types of commercial transactions between a “US person” and a “country of concern” are to be prohibited – transactions involving “data brokerage” (with the term defined broadly) and transactions involving human genomic data. The proposed regulation contains an exemption for certain data transfers in connection with biopharmaceutical clinical investigations and post-marketing surveillance data. The Proposed Rule follows a White House executive order accompanied by an ANPRM issued earlier this March. It also follows instances of damaging cyberespionage breaches by China-linked hackers, which include the infiltration of US broadband providers” networks to sweep up the private communications of hundreds of thousands of Americans as well as access the “lawful intercept” system maintained by the Justice Department to place wiretaps on suspected Chinese spies in the US. Earlier in July, the “Five Eyes” countries, joined by Germany and Japan and South Korea for the first time, had issued a rare joint advisory attributing malicious cyber activities to China. President Xi, for his part, disavowed any such conduct in his Lima meeting with Biden, with his foreign ministry spokesperson having earlier thrown the ball back into the US’ court.
Also on Oct. 29, the US Treasury Department released a voluminous final rule to prohibit outbound investment in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and AI systems to China. The purpose of the Outbound Order is to shut down a pathway for Beijing to exploit the “intangible benefits” – including enhanced standing and prominence, managerial assistance, investment and talent networks, market access, and enhanced access to additional financing – that accompany the flow of US investments to China. The order marks the first instance of the US government controlling outbound capital flows for national security reasons. And while the regulation is framed as addressing capital flows, it effectively regulates the coverage of “greenfield” and “brownfield” investments in these national security technologies and products, too. The Final Rule follows a White House Executive Order issued in August 2023 and a Proposed Rule issued earlier this July.
Finally, on Dec. 2, the US Commerce Department issued a final rule that upgrades the existing controls on China’s access to semiconductor manufacturing equipment so as to impair its capability to produce advanced node semiconductors. Twenty-four types of semiconductor manufacturing equipment and three types of software tools are to be additionally denied to Chinese end-users. Beijing response to the measure was swift. On Dec. 3, it announced a ban on several minerals essential to semiconductor, communications and military technologies, as well as a prohibition on exports of dual-use items to US military end users. Alongside the semiconductor manufacturing equipment rule, the US Commerce Department also imposed controls on the transfer of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which are crucial for accelerating AI training and inference as well as added 140 entities spanning tool companies, chip fabs and investment firms to the Entity List. Earlier this May, a number of Chinese quantum technology companies and research institutes had been added, too, to the List. Overall, the number of Chinese entities placed in the Entity List during the 2018-2023 period have increased over 300% (from 218 to 787). As for license applications submitted that involve a Chinese Entity List-ed party, they increased from five in 2018 to a high of 1,751 in 2021, with approximately 33 percent of applications either denied or revoked.
In addition to these advanced technologies and data flow controls, successive rounds of sanctions were enforced on China for its policies on “forced labor” in Xinjiang and support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. This included the first US sanctions imposed on a Chinese entity for joint development and production of a complete weapon system (the Garpiya series long-range attack unmanned aerial vehicle) with the Russians. No Chinese financial institutions have as yet been sanctioned, despite Secretary Blinken’s threat to do so in his late-April meetings in Beijing. To the contrary, the US Treasury Department and China’s Finance Ministry maintain a cordial working dialogue that spans the range from financial sector operational resilience to debt relief for low-income countries to central bank scenario testing of climate change risks. Earlier in April, the two sides had established dedicated workstreams on Balanced Growth in the Domestic and Global Economies and on Cooperation and Exchange on Anti-Money Laundering under the aegis of their financial and economic working groups.
“Small yard, high fence” export controls has been one component of the Biden administration’s toolkit to vigorously compete with China in the advanced technologies of tomorrow. Alongside, the administration also passed landmark legislation, such as the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), as well as employed an impressive array of industrial policy authorities, such as the Defense Production Act, Buy American Act and the Bayh-Dole Act, to incentivize the expansion of domestic productive capacity in key strategic and high value-added manufacturing industries. To this end, and in its waning days in office, the administration aggressively pushed out CHIPS Incentives Awards totaling in the many billions to the likes of Intel, BAE Systems, GlobalFoundries, and TSMC. There are uncertainties whether this industrial buildout will continue under President Trump and a Republican Congress, particularly with regard to the proposed IRA project investments (fully 80% of announced Korean and Japanese investments are tied to IRA money). Trump had vowed to “terminate” the IRA on the campaign trail and no Republican supported passage of the legislation in 2022. On the other hand, three-quarters of announced investments are in Republican-controlled districts and 65% of them located in counties that voted for Trump.
China was active on the “selective decoupling” front too in 2024, having methodically built a robust economic lawfare toolkit over the past five years. These include the Unreliable Entities Regulation (Sept. 2020), the updated National Security Review Mechanism (Dec. 2020), the Unjustified Extraterritorial Measures Regulation (Jan. 2021), the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law (June 2021), and more lately, a new Dual-Use Export Control Regulation (September 2024) under the framework of its Oct. 2020 Export Control Law. Having absorbed blow after blow of US technology denial measures, China began deploying these tools in earnest in 2024. In March 2024, new procurement guidelines were introduced phasing out foreign operating systems, microprocessors and database software from government PCs and servers. In May, the Cyberspace Administration of China banned the use of the US semiconductor firm Micron’s products in China’s critical information infrastructure following a failed cybersecurity review. There have been calls for a cybersecurity review of Intel too and more lately, a coordinated advisory issued by four Chinese industry bodies to discontinue the usage of US-made chips given that they are “no longer safe.”
In August, the Ministry of Commerce (MofCom), announced export controls on antimony, a critical mineral with military and civilian applications including battery storage. The antimony controls follow on the heels of controls on gallium, germanium, and high-purity natural and synthetic graphite materials introduced in 2023. These controls were effectively upgraded in early-December 2024 to a full ban “in principle” vis-à-vis the US following the latter’s imposition of export controls on China-destined semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Controls on “superhard materials” such as industrial-grade diamonds and tungsten carbide, used in chip manufacturing-related cutting, grinding, and polishing processes, is anticipated to be the next export control shoe to drop. In September, MofCom announced an investigation into the US parent company of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger under its Unreliable Entity List mechanism for its exclusion of Xinjiang-originating cotton from supply chains. And in October, sales of key Chinese battery components to the largest US drone maker, Skydio, was revoked under the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law for its role in arms sales to Taiwan, forcing Skydio to ration batteries to one per drone to customers.
Wave-upon-wave of Taiwan arms-sales related countermeasures against US military companies and senior executives were imposed too in April, May, June, July, September, and December by China’s foreign ministry under its Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law. For added measure, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, General Dynamics Land Systems, and Boeing Defense, Space & Security were separately added to the Commerce Ministry’s Unreliable Entities List in May. In February 2023, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Missiles & Defense became the first US entities to be placed on this list for their role in arms sales to Taiwan. The upshot is clear: China’s countersanctions and reciprocal export control regime is being ramped up which will inevitably lead to more US (and foreign) companies being caught in the crossfire between the US and Chinese regimes.
Trade frictions returned to the fore in US-China relations during the latter half of 2024. The first shot of this new great power rivalry, it bears remembering, was fired in the trade policy arena in the Summer of 2018 when the Trump administration introduced Section 301 List 1 tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports. In total, $370 billion of Chinese imports spread across four lists were thereafter subjected to tariffs, with China imposing lesser retaliatory tariffs also. On May 14, 2024, following a statutory four-year review of the Trump-introduced tariffs, the Biden administration not only retained the tariffs but selectively augmented them to the tune of $18 billion for semiconductors, electric vehicles, batteries, battery parts and critical minerals, solar cells, and certain personal protective equipment (final modified rates were notified in September). Concurrently, the White House and the Treasury Secretary accused China of engaging in non-market practices that was creating excess supply to the detriment of industry and workers abroad. China was failing to meet its industrial subsidies-linked notification requirements at the WTO too, especially regarding proliferation of sub-central level “public-private investment funds” which were driving this structural overcapacity. The additional Section 301 tariffs were justified, in the administration’s telling, to protect the historic Chips Act and IRA investments in strategic sectors (semiconductors, batteries, EVs, solar, medical equipment) from being unfairly undercut by Chinese exports.
The administration’s accusations are not without merit. China’s domestic savings remains excessively high. The fear that these excess savings (and domestic under-consumption) will macroeconomically manifest itself in the form of overproduction that is dumped overseas is genuine. And because a component of this overproduction is the product of non-transparent industrial subsidies, this would amount to unfair trade-distorting competition in international markets. Beijing rejects this characterization. In its view, the current global production landscape is the result of market competition and the international division of labor. Within China, competition in its new energy marketplace is intense; as such, only the fittest survive and therefore tend to prosper in international markets. Export volumes too should not be taken as a benchmark for determining overcapacity either. US, Japan, and Germany’s auto exports for instance account for 23%, 75%, and 50%, respectively, of domestic production; China’s EV exports by comparison account for only 12.5% of production. Besides, there is a huge demand for new energy products in global markets, and it is the fragmentation of global industrial and supply chains due to the adoption of discriminatory subsidy measures by the West that is the primary contributor to “so-called overcapacity,” Beijing counters. China’s subsidy programs adhere to fair competition and non-discrimination rules, are mainly for R&D, are targeted at the consumption end, and are not contingent upon export performance. The WTO secretariat and the European Commission might beg to differ with some of these contentions.
“I am a Tariff Man. When people or countries come in and raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so. It will always be the best way to max out our economic power. We are right now taking $billions in Tariffs. MAKE AMERICA RICH AGAIN.”
So tweeted President Donald Trump, three days after a tense but positive meeting with President Xi on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in December 2018 as the two sides tried to head-off tit-for-tat tariffs on billions of dollars of bilateral trade.
Trump may be notorious for his unpredictability and embellishment. But on the issue of trade and tariffs, he has been a pillar of consistency. From his formative 1980s days as a young Manhattan real estate developer, it has been his cardinal belief that goods consumed in the US must be produced at home using US workers. To the extent that some of these goods are imported, an equivalent dollar amount of US goods should be purchased by that country. At day’s end, bilateral trade must be balanced. Anything less is a “loss” for the US. And hence his dislike of the large bilateral trade surpluses run by China and his sense of personal affront when run by allies, such as Japan and Germany originally and South Korea and the Europeans today, which doubly happen to benefit from expensive treaty-underwritten US defense guarantees.
As president-elect in 2016, Trump vowed to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement; renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement under threat of withdrawal; label China a currency manipulator; bring cases against China at the WTO; and use every lawful presidential power to remedy trade disputes with China and other countries, including the application of tariffs consistent with Section 201 and 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Each vow was fulfilled. With Trump now promising to impose tariffs of at least 60% on all Chinese goods (he had threatened China with 45% tariffs during his 2016 political campaign and ended up imposing 25% tariffs), the president-elect deserves to be taken not just seriously but (quite) literally.
Be that as it may, Beijing is not likely to be in any hurry to flatter the president-elect, having learnt from bitter experience of the limits of its own flattery. Within three months of Trump’s inauguration in 2017, Xi had snagged a high-profile meeting in Mar-a-Lago, which delivered a shiny 100-Day Action Plan under the framework of the US-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue. Later that November, Trump was feted with a “state plus” visit to Beijing where he became the first foreign leader since the founding of the People’s Republic to dine inside the Forbidden City. None of this flattery prevented his national security team from listing China as a “revisionist power” and inaugurating a new era of great power rivalry just a month later in its National Security Strategy of December 2017. Or prevented his trade policy team from slapping Section 301 tariffs in Summer 2018 and launching the trade war.
It is not lost on Xi’s China either that engaging “dealmaker” Donald Trump has the potential to backfire, should the attempt at dealmaking fail. The US-China technology war, with its initial focus on kneecapping Huawei, almost-literally dates back to the day in May 2019 when the “90 Day [trade] talks”—that the two leaders initiated at the December 2018 G20 Buenos Aires summit – formally collapsed. China’s drive toward technological “self-reliance” can be specifically dated to this collapse, too. Xi Jinping reportedly observed to his closest confidants that he had considered the 90-Day talks to be an economic matter and “demonstrated utmost sincerity” but the Trump administration deliberately scuppered the negotiation (by insisting that Beijing sign an unfair bargain) to pursue its true objective: complete suppression of China. China would not succumb to pressure, Xi noted. “We have to come together to survive this situation.”
Where this leaves US-China engagement, remains to be seen. At minimum, the two sides will approach the other warily during the likely-chaotic first year of the second Trump presidency. Almost none of the senior officials who had played a major role in charting the outlines of China policy during Trump’s first term—Secretary of State Pompeo, NSA Robert O’Brien, Deputy NSA Pottinger, and USTR Robert Lighthizer—will be returning in Trump 2.0. Some were even sanctioned by Beijing on their way out in January 2021. One thing is fairly certain though. The multitude of working groups that the two sides had successfully stumbled upon during the Biden-Xi years will be disbanded. In Trump 1.0, the clunky and top-heavy Obama-era Strategic and Economic Dialogue was discarded in favor of four newly established dialogue mechanisms in the areas of diplomacy and security, economic and trade, law enforcement and cybersecurity, and people-to-people exchanges. In Trump 2.0, the wheel will once again be reinvented.
From a longer-term policy standpoint though, the overarching approach toward China will more-or-less remain the same. Two weeks before the first Trump administration left office, NSA O’Brien had declassified the administration’s overarching strategy document for the Indo-Pacific region, titled the US Strategic Framework for The Indo-Pacific. The strategy document featured five elements: (1) advance economic decoupling and prevent China’s industrial policies and unfair trading practices from distorting global markets and harming US competitiveness; (2) maintain US industry’s innovation edge over China; (3) promote US values and influence in the Indo-Pacific and counter Chinese models of governance, coercive behavior and influence operations; (4) maintain an intelligence advantage over China, and against Chinese intelligence activities; and (5) deter China from using military force against the US and its allies and partners by maintaining the capability to deny China sustained air and sea dominance inside the first island chain in a conflict, defending the first island chain nations, including Taiwan, and dominating all warfighting domains outside the first island chain. These elements will continue to guide China policy in Trump 2.0. And Beijing, for its part, will continue to pursue its interests reactively but firmly within this framework.
May – November 2024
This chronology was prepared by Jessica Martin, ICAS Research Associate.
May 1, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken releases a statement encouraging the World Health Organization to reinstate an invitation to Taiwan to participate as an observer at the 77th World Health Assembly.
May 1, 2024: The U.S. Department of the Treasury announces new actions to degrade Russia’s military-industrial base with nearly 300 new sanctions, expressing particular concern about entities based in the PRC.
May 1, 2024: U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti, testifying before Congress about a budget request, calls preparing U.S. military forces for “potential conflict with China” “critically important” and noted “I don’t see how cutting the size of our fleet and shorting AUKUS or AUKUS commitment will deter China.”
May 2, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice sentences the leader of one of the largest counterfeit trademark cases ever prosecuted in the U.S., whose lengthy operation introduced “tens of thousands of counterfeit and low-quality devices trafficked from China into the U.S. supply chain, jeopardizing both private-sector and public-sector users, including highly sensitive U.S. military applications like the support platforms of U.S. fighter jets and other military aircraft.”
May 2, 2024: U.S. Secretary of the Navy Carlos del Toro, delivering a keynote address at Modern Day Marine 2024 in Washington, D.C., calls the People’s Republic of China “our pacing challenge…[that] continues to exert its excessive maritime claims through their navy, coast guard, and maritime militia.”
May 2, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin co-convenes a United States-Japan-Australia Trilateral Defense Ministerial Meeting in Hawaii with his two counterparts during which they discuss the “concerning and destabilizing conduct” by the People’s Republic of China in the South China Sea and reject any attempts to unilaterally change the status quo in the East and South China Seas.
May 2, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin meets with his Australian, Japan and Philippine counterparts in Hawaii, during which they emphasize their commitment to support “regional security and stability” and call on the People’s Republic of China to “abide by the final and legally binding” 2016 South China Sea Arbitration.
May 3, 2024: U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, giving remarks at the McCain Institute’s Sedona Forum, mentions that there is “no denying that China’s catch-up growth lifted hundreds of millions of people from poverty” and calling it one of the great global economic achievements of the past century, though also noting that China’s future growth is “far from certain.”
May 3, 2024: The American Institute in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States conclude a five-day, in-person negotiating round for the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade in Taipei, Taiwan.
May 3, 2024: Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti, speaking to sailors in Virginia about warfighting, lists the People’s Republic of China as one of several global actors who “desire to rewrite the global rules-based order for their own political, military, and economic interests” and it is our job to deter conflict and…to fight and win our Nation’s wars should deterrence fail.”
May 4, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, speaking at the FTWeekend Festival in Washington one month after President Joe Biden signed a law forcing TikTok to cut ties with its owner Beijing-based ByteDance, says it makes “all the sense in the world” for TikTok to divest and become American-owned.
May 6, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases the “International Cyberspace and Digital Policy Strategy: Towards an Innovative, Secure, and Rights-Respecting Digital Future,” in which the People’s Republic of China is called the “broadest, most active, and most persistent cyber threat” to U.S. networks, being made up of both state-sponsored activity and PRC-linked actors who are also working to reshape norms governing cyberspace amidst surveillance and disinformation campaigns.
May 6-10, 2024: U.S. Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Richard Verma travels to China, alongside a visit to the Philippines, to visit the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, the U.S. Consulates General in Shenyang, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and members of the U.S. business community.
May 7, 2024: The U.S. Department of Defense releases a notice on their support of the White House’s National Security Memorandum 22 on critical infrastructure, stating: “We know that the People’s Republic of China and Russia are actively targeting U.S. critical infrastructure to be poised to disrupt our society and interfere with DoD’s operations in a crisis.”
May 8, 2024: The guided-missile destroyer USS Halsey (DDG 97) conducts a routine transit through the Taiwan Strait “in accordance with international law.”
May 8, 2024: The U.S. Department of Commerce, as first reported by Financial Times, revokes “certain licenses for exports to Huawei” allowing American companies to supply Huawei with semiconductor chips.
May 8, 2024: U.S. Department of State Spokesperson Matthew Miller, in response to questions regarding the Hong Kong authorities banning the song “Glory to Hong Kong,” says the U.S. remains “seriously concerned about the continued erosion of protections for human rights and fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong, including the freedom of expression.”
May 8-9, 2024: U.S. Senior Advisor to the President for International Climate Policy John Podesta and PRC Special Envoy for Climate Change Liu Zhenmin co-lead a meeting of the U.S.-China Working Group on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s in Washington, D.C.
May 9, 2024: The U.S. Department of Defense releases its annual Freedom of Navigation Report for Fiscal Year 2023, in which five ‘Excessive Maritime Claims’ are listed against the People’s Republic of China—two more claims than any other claimant listed—all five of which are associated with “multiple operational challenges” and one of which being the only claim in this list noted as challenged jointly with international partners and allies.
May 9, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, providing remarks at the 2024 World Food Prize laureate announcement in Washington, D.C., “fondly” remembers Professor Yuan Longping of China, hailed as the father of hybrid rice, as one of two 2004 laureates being specially honored.
May 9, 2024: U.S. Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman, in his remarks at the Australian Air and Space Conference, summarily argues that the U.S. strategy “should focus on confronting Chinese and Russian malign activity in the domain through protracted day to day competition, which is a preferable state, compared to crisis or conflict.”
May 9, 2024: The Department of Homeland Security, in partnership with other agencies, sentences a Chinese citizen, U.S. permanent resident, and billionaire to months in prison for making political contributions in the names of others, immigration fraud, and producing a false identification document.
May 9, 2024: U.S. Senior Official for the DPRK Jung Pak meets with PRC Special Representative on Korean Peninsula Affairs Liu Xiaoming in Tokyo, Japan, as a follow up to Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to China in late April 2024.
May 10, 2024: The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Halsey (DDG 97), as described in a comparatively extensive notice, asserts navigational rights and freedoms in the South China Sea near the Paracel Islands and then continues operations with a freedom of navigation operation in the South China Sea.
May 13, 2024: U.S. National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard, speaking in a background press call on Biden Administration efforts to protect American workers and business from China’s unfair trade practices, says “China is simply too big to play by its own rules.”
May 13, 2024: U.S. President Joe Biden issues an order arguing the real estate acquisition by MineOne Partners Limited, a company majority owned by Chinese nationals, is a national security threat as the company prepares to conduct “specialized cryptocurrency mining operations in close proximity” to Frances E. Warren Air Force Base on that real estate.
May 13, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a celebratory note on the Department’s record-breaking number of visitor visas successfully issued, with China being listed as one of the major issue points of visitor visa and border crossing cards in the first half of fiscal year 2024.
May 13, 2024: U.S. Consul General Gregory May at the U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong & Macau provides a keynote address at a think tank event on the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy since 2020, during which he describes the U.S. relationship with Hong Kong as having three components: “very good people-to-people ties…productive business and trade cooperation, and…a very challenging relationship with the Hong Kong government.”
May 14, 2024: U.S. President Joe Biden initiates actions to protect American workers and business from “China’s unfair trade practices concerning technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation,” leading to the increase of tariffs on $18 billion of imports from China. Directly after his announcement, he gives lengthy remarks regarding the new actions which include comparisons of the U.S. and Chinese markets and a conversation held with President Xi Jinping on the issue.
May 14, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo releases a statement on President Joe Biden’s actions concerning China’s unfair trade practices, adding that “[w]e know the PRC’s playbook – we’ve seen their non-market actions on solar and steel – and cannot allow China to undermine U.S. supply chains by flooding the market with artificially cheap products” that harm the U.S.
May 14, 2024: The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative releases a four-year review of the actions taken in the Section 301 investigation against China’s technology transfer-related acts, policies, and practices, summarizing that these actions have been “effective,” especially in diversifying the supply chain, but, “[i]nstead of pursuing fundamental reform, the Government of China has persisted and even become more aggressive, particularly through cyber intrusions and cybertheft, in its attempts to acquire and absorb foreign technology.”
May 14, 2024: U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen releases a statement at end of the Section 301 review, recommitting to continued dialogues directly with Chinese counterparts as these problems of overcapacity and macroeconomic imbalances “will not be solved in a day.”
May 14, 2024: U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, following the release of the statutory review of the tariff actions in the Section 301 investigation, remarks that “President Biden is directing me to take further action to encourage the elimination of the People’s Republic of China’s unfair technology transfer-related policies and practices,” recommends that current tariffs should remain, and is adding or increasing tariffs to certain products under the direction of President Biden. In a press briefing at the White House, Tai notes the entire Biden-Harris administration has “been very, very clear about the sobriety with which we approach the U.S.-China trade and economic relationship. It needs to be fair.”
May 14, 2024: Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Technology and National Security Tarun Chhabra and Department of State Acting Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology Seth Center lead an interagency U.S. delegation to meet with a PRC delegation in Geneva, Switzerland to discuss artificial intelligence risk and safety.
May 15, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, responding to a question during a joint press conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, again clarifies that Washington’s concern is “not about China providing weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine…China’s held back from that,” but is about the “support that China’s providing to Russia to rebuild its defense industrial base”—namely, machine tools and microelectronics—in ways that are making a difference to Russia’s campaign against Ukraine.
May 16, 2024: Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner speaks via teleconference with PRC Major General Li Bin, Director of the Central Military Commission Office for International Military Cooperation, to discuss issues of mutual concern and maintain “open lines of communication in defense channels to reduce the risks of miscommunication.”
May 16, 2024: During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on a budget request for the Department of the Navy, China is regularly mentioned, being called “the pacing challenge” and repeatedly referred to as “the world’s largest ship builder.”
May 16, 2024: National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard delivers remarks at a Center for American Progress event centered around responding to the challenges of China’s industrial overcapacity.
May 16, 2024: The Biden-Harris Administration announces new actions to “strengthen American solar manufacturing and protect businesses and workers from China’s unfair trade actions.”
May 16, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a statement expressing deep concerns over “reports that PRC citizen journalist Ms. Zhang Zhan has disappeared following her expected release from Shanghai Women’s Prison” three days prior and reiterating U.S. concerns about the “arbitrary nature of her detention and authorities’ mistreatment of her.”
May 17, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice announces the arrest of two Chinese nationals based in California, alleging they played leading roles in a scheme to launder at least $73 million in proceeds through shell companies from cryptocurrency investment scams.
May 17, 2024: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security adds 26 additional PRC-based textile companies to Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List, with Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas noting that the U.S. will continue to “hold the PRC accountable for their exploitation and abuse of the Uyghur people.”
May 19, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken releases a congratulatory message to Dr. Lai Ching-te on his inauguration as Taiwan’s fifth democratically elected president and commemorating President Tsai Ing-wen for her role in strengthening U.S.-Taiwan ties.
May 20, 2024: The U.S. Embassy in Wuhan, China, opens up business and tourism visa interviews “to anyone applying in China” as part of efforts to support people-to-people engagement with the U.S.
May 21-23, 2024: Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Industry & Analysis Grant Harris participates in the 14th annual United States-China Tourism Leadership Summit in Xi’an, China, making him the highest-ranking official ever to lead the American delegation to this Summit, which Harris calls “an important vehicle” in enhancing tourism back to pre-pandemic levels.
May 22, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, responding to a press question on overcapacity, says that “China’s distorted practices, nonmarket economic practices, subsidizing at dramatic scale industries where they are going to produce so much quantity of good and then flood the global markets with it threatens to create global imbalances that are not stabilizing.”
May 22, 2024: U.S. naval forces conduct operations in the South China Sea in partnership with the Royal Netherlands Navy as part of efforts to maintain “stability and free use of vital sea lanes in the Indo-Pacific.”
May 22, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice announces the arrest of two members of a transnational money laundering organization related to the importation of illegal drugs into the U.S. in coordination with co-conspirators in China.
May 22, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice announces the guilty pleas of two men in Florida who defrauded a U.S. biochemical company and exported millions of dollars worth of biochemical products to China using falsified export documents.
May 23, 2024: U.S. Department of State China Coordinator and Deputy Assistant Secretary for China and Taiwan Mark Lambert and PRC Director-General for Boundary and Ocean Affairs Hong Liang hold the second round of consultations on bilateral maritime affairs virtually to discuss the “current situation in the South China Sea and East China Sea, as well as other maritime issues,” and to reaffirm the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
May 23, 2024: Jeanne Pryor, Deputy Assistant Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau for the Middle East, testifies before the House in a budget request that China is one of three “malign influences” that “promulgate misinformation” and “take advantage of the unpopularity of U.S. policy in the region.”
May 23, 2024: U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, speaking ahead of the G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meetings, lists “China’s industrial overcapacity” as one of three priority areas for the United States, adding that it is “not a bilateral issue between the U.S. and China.”
May 23, 2024: Robert Silvers, Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy, and Plans at the Department of Homeland Security, releases a blog post discussing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) in which he announces the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force’s plans to “further scale up” efforts to expand the UFLPA Entity List.
May 24, 2024: The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative extends certain exclusions in the Section 301 tariffs investigation, now extending them through May 31, 2025.
May 24, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice announces the guilty plea of a Hong Kong-born, naturalized U.S. citizen and former Central Intelligence Agency officer who admitted to, along with a co-conspirator, gathering and delivering “a large volume of classified U.S. national defense information” to the People’s Republic of China Shanghai State Security Bureau starting in 2001.
May 25, 2024: The U.S. Department of Defense releases a short statement dedicated to expressing confidence in the current U.S. force posture and operations in the Indo-Pacific, also stating they have “closely monitored joint military drills by the People’s Liberation Army in the Taiwan Strait and around Taiwan.”
May 25, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a statement expressing deep concern over the People’s Liberation Army joint military drills in the Taiwan Strait and around Taiwan, urging Beijing “to act with restraint” and reiterating the U.S. commitment to its “longstanding one China policy.”
May 28, 2024: U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai releases an op-ed in The Financial Times in which she calls China’s trade-related behavior “monopolistic” and warns the need to remain “clear eyed that China is not just a trading partner, but is pursuing global dominance across key economic sectors,” which is why the Biden-Harris administration—soon followed by other countries—has been increasing tariffs.
May 29, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice announces the successful completion of an operation to dismantle a residential proxy service botnet, known as “911 S5,” created and operated by a PRC national, that is responsible for cyberattacks, large-scale fraud, and child exploitation, among other violations.
May 29-30, 2024: U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns and Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Xie Feng provide video remarks to the U.S.-China High-Level Event on Subnational Climate Action, hosted by the California-China Climate Institute in Berkeley, California, each encouraging bilateral collaboration and exchanges on climate.
May 30, 2024: Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer meets with People’s Republic of China Executive Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Ma Zhaoxu in Washington, D.C. to discuss both areas of difference and areas in which the two countries can advance cooperation.
May 30, 2024: Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell hosts PRC Executive Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu for an official visit in Washington, D.C. during which they mutually reaffirmed the importance of open channels of communications at all times and discussed a variety of “regional and global issues, including areas of difference and areas of cooperation that matter most to the American people and the world.”
May 30, 2024: U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo, speaking at a public event with German business leaders, calls China Russia’s main partner in the Ukraine crisis that must be addressed: “Our economies are intertwined with China’s. We do not seek to decouple from China. We want a healthy economic relationship with China that benefits both sides. But if China does not put a stop to the trade of dual-use goods to Russia, we will have to take action to hold them accountable.”
May 31, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin meets with PRC Minister of National Defense Dong Jun in Singapore on the margins of the Shangri-La Dialogue to discuss bilateral defense relations and communicate points of concern and cooperation.
May 31, 2024: The Department of Homeland Security arraigns five Chinese nationals on federal charges alleging they operated a large-scale, trans-Pacific counterfeit Apple device scheme resulting in at least $12.3 million in losses.
May 31, 2024: U.S. National Security Agency Director and head of Cyber Command Gen. Timothy Haugh, speaking in a television interview, says “[w]e’re really seeing China be very aggressive” in targeting foreign computer networks and the U.S. is “rapidly working with any number of nations to expose wherever we can…to take advantage of that.”
May 31, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a statement expressing its deep concern over the “guilty verdicts announced in the National Security Law trial of pro-democracy organizers in Hong Kong,” calling for their immediate release of “these unjustly detained individuals,” and announcing new visa restrictions on “PRC and Hong Kong officials responsible.’
May 31, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking to the media after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, shares what he has told Chinese counterparts in Beijing: “China cannot expect on the one hand to improve relations with countries of Europe while on the other hand fueling the biggest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War.”
June 2, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin co-hosts the United States-Japan-Republic of Korea Trilateral Ministerial Meeting with his two counterparts in Singapore and releases a statement in which the three representatives reaffirmed their strong opposition to “changes in status quo in the water of the Indo-Pacific” as well as their positions on the “dangerous and aggressive behavior” by the People’s Republic of China amidst “unlawful maritime claims” in the South China Sea.
June 2, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin meets with Southeast Asian defense ministers in Singapore, reiterating concerns about “coercive activity” conducted by the People’s Republic of China in the South China Sea and calling on Beijing to abide by the legally binding 2016 Arbitration.
June 3, 2024: The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar holds an interview with The Washington Post to explain “Washington’s new hard-line consensus on China.”
June 4, 2024: FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaking before the Senate, explains that funding is necessary to “continue countering the threat posed by the PRC—a government sparing no expense in its quest to hack, lie, cheat, and steal its way to the top as a global superpower, and to undermine our democracy and our economic success.”
June 4, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a statement in commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the “Tiananmen Square massacre,” reaffirming the U.S. commitment to promoting “accountability for PRC human rights abuses both within and outside its borders.”
June 5, 2024: FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director Bryan Vorndran, delivering a keynote address at the 2024 Boston Conference on Cyber Security, directly calls China “the most prolific threat” in cybersecurity, emphasizing the “hundreds of examples” of intellectual property or personally identifiable information theft conducted by Chinese actors.
June 5, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice charges an American in New York with allegations of illegally shipping two species of protected wildlife turtles from the U.S. to China for the global pet trade black market.
June 6, 2024: U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Financial Markets Nicholas Tabor delivers public remarks in Cambridge, Massachusetts, summarizing the progress made by the Financial Working Group co-chaired by the U.S. Treasury and People’s Bank of China over the last year.
June 8, 2024: U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron release the French-American Roadmap, which lists “strong concern about…dual-use materials and components for military production from businesses in the People’s Republic of China” being used by Russia against Ukraine.
June 8, 2024: U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanual Macron hold a joint press conference in Paris, during which they express concerns about “China’s unfair trade practices, which bring about overcapacity” and require a coordinated response to.
June 9, 2024: U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel holds an interview with The Wire China to discuss “Seeing China as a Strategic Adversary.”
June 11, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice sentences a Chinese citizen and a Texas citizen over a conspiracy to evade economic sanctions and sell sanctioned Iranian petroleum to buyers in the People’s Republic of China.
June 11, 2024: The Department of Homeland Security adds three China-based companies—a seafood, an aluminum, and a footwear company—to the Uygur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List.
June 12, 2024: Michael Camilleri, Acting Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean at the U.S. Agency for International Development, testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that U.S. foreign policy priorities and approach is in “clear contrast” to that of the People’s Republic of China.
June 13, 2024: U.S. Consulate General in Wuhan welcomes its new Consul General Christopher Green, who comments that it is an “exciting time as the consulate expands its consular, trade, culture, and education programs in Central China.”
June 13, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice accepts the guilty plea of a non-national resident of Mainland China who, in collaboration with his Chinese co-defendant and ownership partner in a PRC-based battery business, conspired to send trade secrets that belonged to a leading U.S.-based electric vehicle company.
June 13, 2024: U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, speaking at the Economic Club of New York, calls the U.S. and Chinese economies and their interactions “crucial to global growth,” believes the U.S. has “nothing to fear from healthy economic competition,” denies that “decoupling” would be in any way beneficial for the U.S. economy, and expresses particular concern about China’s “enduring macroeconomic imbalances” and “unfair trade practices.”
June 14, 2024: The Group of Seven leaders release the G7 Apulia Leaders’ Communiqué, which extensively acknowledges China’s importance to, influence within, and supposed responsibilities in sectors across the globe, including but not limited to: cyberspace, international peace and security, global trade, maritime affairs, human rights, Russia’s military industrial base, and its cross-strait relations with Taiwan.
June 14, 2024: U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen states that the outcome of the G7 Summit affirms that her repeatedly stated concerns on China’s overcapacity are “widely shared across the G7,” clarifying that the U.S. “seeks a healthy economic relationship with China, but this requires competing on a level playing field.”
June 14, 2024: U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns gives a commencement speech to students at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, emphasizing the “hope” he still has for U.S.-China relations in spite of how “the most important relationship between two countries in the world today” was pulled apart over the last few years, also challenging the students to make positive progress in this fundamental bilateral relationship going forward by working with one another with a common purpose.
June 14, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice sentences a Washington-based home goods company who pleaded guilty to falsely declaring five shipping containers of products that were harvested and produced in China, not in Malaysia, to evade oversigned of Chinese-harvested timber and import duties.
June 14, 2024: The U.S. 7th Fleet conducts a maneuvering exercise with the French Navy in the Philippine Sea in “support of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
June 15, 2024: A senior official of the Biden-Harris administration, during a background press call made during the second day of the G7 meeting, mentions a collaborative defense against China’s current economic practices several times, once noting how “it’s more clear that President Xi’s ambition is to restore China’s dominance, at least in the Indo-Pacific, possibly beyond,” through economic and technological primacy. The official also acknowledges a recent shift made in addressing China, stating that “some of China’s actions to support the Russian war machine are now not just threatening Ukraine’s existence, but European security and transatlantic security” which has driven Washington to take more serious measures against China.
June 16-17, 2024: The U.S. Navy conducts a Maritime Cooperative Activity with their Canadian, Japanese and Philippine counterparts in the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone in the South China Sea to demonstrate their “collective commitment to strengthen regional and international cooperation in the maritime domain.”
June 17, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a statement condemning the “unjust sentencing” of activists Huang Xueqin (Sophia Huang) and Wang Jianbing, calling the sentences “the PRC’s continued efforts to intimidate and silence civil society.”
June 17, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a statement on “U.S. Support for the Philippines in the South China Sea,” condemning China’s “escalatory and irresponsible actions” keeping humanitarian supplies from Philippine service members at the BDP Sierra Madre and China’s “consistent disregard” for international law in the South China Sea.
June 18, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice announces a superseding indictment involving a partnership between Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and a Chinese criminal syndicate operating in Los Angeles and China to launder drug money underground, thus perpetuating the import of narcotics into the U.S.
June 18-20, 2024: The U.S. Navy conducts bilateral operations with the Royal Canadian Navy in the South China Sea “as a demonstration of our shared commitment to the rules-based international order.”
June 19, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks on the phone with Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Enrique Manalo about China’s “dangerous and irresponsible” escalatory actions against the Philippines in the South China Sea.
June 19-20, 2024: White House Director of National Drug Control Policy Dr. Rahul Gupta leads an interagency delegation of senior officials to Beijing to discuss counternarcotics cooperation, meeting separately with State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong, members of the shipping industry, as well as the PRC Minister of Sport to discuss zero tolerance for sports doping.
June 20, 2024: U.S. Mission China announces structural changes in provincial jurisdiction of their consulates and embassy, confident that they will “bring about new opportunities and stronger regional connections for the respective provinces and consulates.”
June 20, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, reiterates the United States’ deep concerns over how China is “providing critical support to Russia’s defense industrial base…hat has enabled Russia to keep that defense industrial base going, to keep the war machine going, to keep the war going.” “[I]t can’t,” Blinken says, “on the one hand, say that it wants better relations with countries in Europe while at the same time fueling the biggest security threat to Europe as a whole since the end of the Cold War…So if China in particular, which professes to have a strong interest in ending the war – if it really means it, it will stop fueling the war machine.”
June 20, 2024: Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, while outlining the strategic guidance to guide critical infrastructure security and resilience efforts for both the public and private sectors, lists “Addressing cyber and other threats posed by the People’s Republic of China” as the first priority area.
June 20, 2024: The U.S. Department of the Treasury delivers its semiannual Report to Congress on Macroeconomic and Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States, listing China as one of seven countries on its “Monitoring List” and reiterating Washington’s call for increased transparency from China.
June 20, 2024: U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, speaking at a press conference on a new advisory for financial institutions to help them detect financial flows linked to illicit fentanyl trade, describes counternarcotics as a focus in the U.S.-China bilateral relationship, especially as China is “the key source of the precursor chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl.”
June 21, 2024: The American Institute in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States host consultations in Taipei, Taiwan, with representatives from the U.S. Department of State and the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs to discuss expanding Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international fora like the United Nations system.
June 21, 2024: U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, speaking in an interview with BBC, says China has “agreed to increase our military-to-military communications” to prevent misunderstandings, also noting that Washington has “warned the Chinese not to involve themselves in our election in any way, shape or form.”
June 22, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, while delivering a commencement address at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, says “[w]e can stand up to China, and we can engage in responsible diplomacy with China,” while emphasizing that is what President Joe Biden also believes.
June 24, 2024: U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell delivers opening remarks at the launch of the Council on Foreign Relations’ China Strategy Initiative on sustaining U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific.
June 24, 2024: U.S. Mission China releases a second video in its U.S.-South China Exchanges video series, which “highlights pivotal stories of cooperation and shared accomplishments” over the last 200 years.
June 24, 2024: U.S. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, speaking in an interview with The Washington Post, reiterates that the U.S. is “in a space race with the Chinese, and that they are very good…and they execute on what they say.”
June 25, 2024: U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, speaking in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, says that, though Beijing routinely says they’re in favor of people-to-people engagement, “they’re taking dramatic steps to make it impossible.” Burns elaborates, “I’ve been concerned for my two-plus years here about the very aggressive Chinese government…efforts to denigrate America, to tell a distorted story about American society, American history, American policy. It happens every day on all the networks available to the government here, and there’s a high degree of anti-Americanism online.”
June 26, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases the 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom, produced under the direction of Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Rashad Hussain, who notes the report continues to highlight “ongoing crimes against humanity and genocide the Chinese Government is perpetrating.”
June 26, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin holds a call with Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr., during which they discuss the “dangerous actions” conducted by the People’s Republic of China on June 17 against “lawful operations by the Philippines.”
June 26, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan holds a call with Philippine National Security Advisor Eduardo Año, during which they shared concerns over the People’s Republic of China’s “dangerous and escalatory actions against the Philippines’ lawful maritime operations” in the South China Sea.
June 26, 2024: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announces that PetroChina International America, a subsidiary of oil and gas company PetroChina International Co. Ltd., has agreed to pay a fine and monetary forfeiture totaling $14.5 million for violations of U.S. export law.
June 27, 2024: U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell holds a call with People’s Republic of China Executive Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu to discuss areas of both cooperation and differences as part of “ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication.”
June 27, 2024: Greg Howell, Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean at the U.S. Agency for International Development, speaking before the House on socialism in Central America and the Caribbean, calls China a “malign actor” that is supporting Nicaragua’s current repressive authoritarian rule.
June 27, 2024: U.S. Consul General Gregory May at the U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong & Macau, speaking at the Independence Day Reception in Hong Kong, reminisces on the more than two centuries of connected history between the U.S. and Hong Kong, also emphasizing the several points of commonalities and strongly shared interests that remain therein today.
June 27, 2024: U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, speaking in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Russia’s war in Ukraine, says “I think the Chinese have miscalculated…did not understand the core value that we place in our current world on peace and unity in Europe itself,” adding that “China is not exhibiting the behavior of a neutral country.”
July 1, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken holds a conversation on U.S. foreign policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., during which he makes several references to the “challenges” posed by China and how the Biden-Harris administration is working to responsibly manage “what is arguably the most complex and consequential relationship of any in the world…from a position of strength” but with cooperation in mind, where possible. “I think China’s objectives are clear,” Blinken elaborates. “Over time, over the coming decades, they would like to be the leading country, the dominant country, in the international system militarily, economically, diplomatically…But they have a different vision, a different vision of what that future looks like. And so we disagree, and we’re going to compete very vigorously to make sure that we’re the ones who are effectively shaping that future…The complexity of it, the fact that our countries and so many of our societies are so intertwined, means that, again, there are going to be areas where we’re in vigorous competition. There are areas where we’re clearly going to be contesting. But there are also areas where we’re going to be cooperating because, again, it’s in our mutual interest.”
July 1, 2024: The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions China-based members of a money laundering organization with criminal links to the Mexico-based Sinaloa Cartel as part of ongoing cooperative efforts with China on countering money laundering and other illicit finance issues, including those linked to the fentanyl trade.
July 1, 2024: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announces the guilty pleas of two men in Virginia of importing high-quality counterfeit identification cards from China to the U.S., which they would then sell online.
July 1, 2024: The U.S. Space Force publishes an article titled “Combat-Ready – Embracing a new US Space Force Generational Model” in which China is described as one of two “ambitious” authoritarian regimes “challenging established rules and norms” with “irresponsible behavior” that threatens both U.S. national security and a smooth functioning global economy.
July 2, 2024: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announces the first large charter flight since 2018 to remove Chinese nationals from the U.S. to the People’s Republic of China, which was conducted in close coordination with the National Immigration Administration of the PRC, who will continue to work with the U.S. on additional removal flights.
July 4, 2024: U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns gives public remarks in China on the occasion of Independence Day, during which he welcomes Special Envoy for Climate Change Liu Zhenmin and other Chinese officials present in the audience.
July 8, 2024: The U.S. National Security Agency, jointly with the Australian Signals Directorate and other global agencies, releases a Cybersecurity Advisory titled “PRC MSS Tradecraft in Action,” detailing the tradecraft used by the cyber actor group known as APT40 that is associated with the People’s Republic of China Ministry of State Security.
July 9, 2024: U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, testifying for the House Committee on Financial Services, calls support for international financial institutions “the only realistic option” for the U.S. to participate in competing against China’s own high-quality development financing.
July 9, 2024: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security releases an updated Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Strategy, identifying new high priority sectors for enforcement—aluminum, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and seafood—for the first time and redeclaring the U.S. commitment to countering forced labor.
July 9, 2024: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security-led, interagency Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force releases a Report to Congress titled “2024 Updates to the Strategy to Prevent the Importation of Goods Mined, Produced, or Manufactured with Forced Labor in the People’s Republic of China,” adding aluminum, polyvinyl chloride, and seafood as new high priority sectors for enforcement.
July 10, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, responding to a question posed at the 2024 NATO Public Forum on expanding Chinese military exercises, states that Russia’s “massive buildup of its weaponry” and its defense industrial base is “being fueled by China” and is what has “enabled [Russia] to sustain its aggression against Ukraine.” “China can’t have it both ways,” Blinken adds, “It can’t…claim to be for peace and want to have better relations with Europe – while at the same time fueling what is arguably the most significant threat to European security since the end of the Cold War.”
July 10, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken discusses challenges posed by the People’s Republic of China, including the PRC’s support for Russia’s military industrial base, in a bilateral meeting with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
July 10, 2024: U.S. Under Secretary for International Affairs Jay Shambaugh delivers remarks at a public event on Chinese overcapacity and the global economy, detailing in particular the Biden administration’s “pursuit of a healthy economic relationship between the U.S. and China with a level playing field for American workers and firms.”
July 10, 2024: The White House releases a proclamation on “Adjusting Imports of Aluminum Into the United States,” including China as one of the countries of relevance to the supply chain.
July 10, 2024: U.S. President Joe Biden extends the national emergency with respect to Hong Kong, including “recent actions taken by the People’s Republic of China to fundamentally undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy,” for one year.
July 11, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, responding to a press question on China’s geopolitical presence in the Northwest Passage amidst the announcement of the ICE Pact, calls China “a country that does not share our interests or our vision for the world” that could be dangerous if they held leverage on supply chain chokepoints.
July 11, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, giving remarks at the NATO Public Forum, lists China as one of the countries “cheerleading” President Vladimir Putin’s takeover of Ukraine.
July 11, 2024: U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner, speaking at the 2024 CSIS South China Sea Conference, says: “Let me be clear that the PRC’s claim to the Shoal has no more credibility today than it did when the Arbitral Tribunal issued its unanimous ruling in 2016. And the kind of revisionism and coercion we’ve seen there from the PRC is both destabilizing and dangerous.”
July 11, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a press statement on the eighth anniversary of the Philippines-PRC South China Sea Arbitral Tribunal ruling, reaffirming the United States’ call to the PRC to abide by the ruling and to “cease its dangerous and destabilizing conduct” such as those taken over the last year against Philippine vessels in the South China Sea.
July 11, 2024: U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking in a press conference, notes that he has “spent more time with Xi Jinping than any world leader has—over 90 hours” and says that “Xi believes that China is a large enough market that they can entice any country, including European countries, to invest there in return for commitments.”
July 12, 2024: U.S. President Joe Biden signs into law S.138, the “Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act” that encourages the two parties to resume direct dialogue and “seek a settlement that resolves differences and leads to a negotiated agreement on Tibet.”
July 12, 2024: The U.S. Department of State imposes visa restrictions on officials from the People’s Republic of China for their involvement in “repression of marginalized religious and ethnic communities” and calls on the PRC to abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
July 17, 2024: USTR Deputy Permanent Representative David Bisbee delivers the United States’ Trade Policy Review on the PRC on to a visiting Chinese delegation led by Minister of Commerce Li Fei, summarizing that the “fundamental challenges to that [international trade] system that the PRC presents…not only persist, but are increasing.”
July 19, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, speaking in a public interview at the Aspen Security Forum, makes multiple direct statements regarding Chinese activities related to the Ukraine-Russia war, a potential conflict with Taiwan, and tensions with the Philippines over the Second Thomas Shoal. “China continues to be a major supplier of dual-use items to Russia’s war machine,” Sullivan noted, “[a]nd we think China should stop because we think it is profoundly outside of the bounds of decent conduct by nation-states. And China should not be on team Russia when it comes to the war in Ukraine.” Sullivan says “I believe that it has to be a fundamental object of American policy to ensure that never happens; that we deter China and dissuade China from ever launching an aggressive war against Taiwan to try to take the island…we have seen the undermining of peace and stability and actions China has taken, we have taken responsive actions for our part, and we will continue to do that. So this remains a paramount priority of U.S. policy. The maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is essential to the maintenance of peace and stability in the world.”
July 19, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking in a public interview at the Aspen Security Forum, makes several statements regarding China on issues such as China’s provision of inputs for Russia’s defense industrial base, the positive restoration of regular, high-level bilateral engagements since November 2023, concerns over the fentanyl supply chain through Mexico, and maintaining stability in the Taiwan Strait. Blinken also said that he speaks to his Chinese counterpart “on a fairly regular basis,” which is critical “so at least China knows where we’re coming from, just as we know where they’re coming from.”
July 20, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a statement marking the 25 years since the People’s Republic of China “began a campaign of repression against practitioners of Falun Gong” and calls upon the PRC to “cease its repressive campaign and release all who have been imprisoned for their beliefs.”
July 22, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice unseals an indictment of a Chinese national and Texas resident for his role in a 2023 conspiracy to import what is believed to be one of the largest amounts of fentanyl precursors in the United States.
July 22, 2024: U.S. Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink, responding to press questions, says “we do welcome the announcement” of a diplomatic agreement between the Philippines and China regarding Second Thomas Shoal, calling it a “Philippines sovereign matter” wherein the United States’ role has been to continue to support our Filipino allies and international law.
July 22, 2024: U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, speaking in a press conference about the new 2024 U.S. Department of Defense Arctic Strategy, says China “seeks greater influence in the region, greater access to the region and a greater say in its governance…[to] internationalize the Arctic region,” also noting that the U.S. has “seen growing cooperation between the PRC and Russia in the Arctic” both commercially and militarily which is “concerning.”
July 23, 2024: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announces the arrest of a man being investigated over receiving shipments of illegal substances directly from China and being in direct contact with an illegal chemical supplier based in China.
July 24, 2024: FBI Director Christopher Wray submits a statement before the House Judiciary Committee in which he references the PRC several times, most notably as as a cyber threat and a foreign intelligence threat, at one point calling PRC espionage efforts “the greatest long-term threat to our Nation’s ideas, innovation, and economic security” and “consistent with the PRC’s expressed goals of becoming the preeminent power on the world stage.”
July 24, 2024: The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposes sanctions on a network of six individuals and five entities based in the PRC for their involvement in the procurement of items supporting the DPRK’s unlawful WMD and ballistic missile programs.
July 24, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice unseals an indictment charging a Chinese immigrant to the U.S. of acting and conspiring to act as an agent of the People’s Republic of China as a “cooperative contact working at the direction of officers” of the PRC’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) to obtain “a wide variety of information at the request of the MSS.”
July 25, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice accepts the guilty plea of two Chinese citizens residing in California who acted as unregistered agents of the PRC government directed “to further the PRC’s campaign to repress and harass Falun Gong practitioners” in the United States.
July 27, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and PRC Director of the CCP Central Foreign Affairs Commission and Foreign Minister Wang Yi meet in Vientiane, Laos, on the margins of the ASEAN-related ministerial meetings for “open and productive discussions” and agree to maintain open lines of communication at all levels.
July 27, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking at the ASEAN Post Ministerial Conference with the U.S., applauds the diplomatic agreement reached between China and the Philippines regarding the Second Thomas Shoal amidst the “PRC’s escalatory and unlawful actions taken against the Philippines in the South China Sea over the last few months.”
July 28, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases the Joint Statement on the U.S.-Japan Ministerial Meeting on Extended Deterrence, which lists “China’s accelerating and opaque expansion of its nuclear arsenal” as an increasing, escalatory concern.
July 28, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin release a joint statement with their Japanese counterparts that states the parties “concurred that the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s foreign policy seeks to reshape the international order for its own benefit at the expense of others” and “reiterated their strong opposition” to the PRC’s unilateral actions in both the East and South China Seas.
July 28, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin release a joint statement with their Japanese counterparts following a meeting of the U.S.-Japan Extended Deterrence Dialogue in which they include “China’s accelerating and opaque expansion of its nuclear arsenal” in a list of shared security concerns.
July 30, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin release a joint statement with their Philippine counterparts that expresses serious concerns about the dangerous behavior in the South China Sea over the past year and calls on the PRC to comply with both the international law of the sea and the 2016 Philippines v. China arbitration ruling.
July 30, 2024: The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control targets five individuals and seven entities based in Iran, the People’s Republic of China, and Hong Kong that have facilitated procurements for Iran’s ballistic missile and unmanned aerial vehicle program.
July 31, 2024: The Biden-Harris Administration gives President Joe Biden a briefing on ongoing work to combat illicit fentanyl, the readout for which includes the “forging of historic counternarcotics cooperation with China and Mexico” in a list of successes.
July 31, 2024: National Security Advisor John Kirby, responding to a press inquiry on China expanding its influence in the Middle East, says “we’ve said many times we would welcome any credible role by China or any other nation, whether they’re in the region or not…Any other nations contributions that can be done in a credible, transparent, and sustainable way would be welcome. We’ve simply not seen that coming out of the PRC.”
July 31, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking in a public conversation in Singapore on advancing security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region, calls the relationship with China “arguably the most complicated and most consequential in the world,” adding: “We’re in a competition – and by the way, there’s nothing wrong with competition…As long as it’s fair, as long as it’s on a level playing field, it’s a good thing. It hopefully brings out the best in everyone. We want to make sure that that competition doesn’t veer into conflict, which is profoundly not in our interest or anyone else’s, nor in China’s.”
July 31, 2024: The U.S. and China hold a multiagency, senior official meeting as part of the U.S.-PRC Counternarcotics Working Group in Washington, D.C. in which they reviewed progress and discussed further cooperation.
Aug. 1, 2024: The U.S.-PRC Bilateral Counternarcotics Working Group holds a senior official meeting in Washington, D.C. to review progress and discuss “next steps in furthering cooperation on this critical effort.”
Aug. 1, 2024: U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Dr. Vipin Narang, speaking at a public event on nuclear threats in Washington, D.C., mentions that Washington was “encouraged” by China’s affirmation that a nuclear war must never be fought, but notes the PRC’s construction of hundreds of new ICBM silos in recent years, fueled by Russia, and shares that the “PRC has likely completed silo construction and has begun loading them with missiles.”
Aug. 2, 2024: U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, delivering remarks at the 2024 American Bar Association General Assembly, says “China looms large as well” in the field of online disinformation, “using social media to portray democracies as chaotic and to sow division in the United States” with the hope to collect data to “better understand – and eventually manipulate – public opinion.”
Aug. 2, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice sentences a Taiwanese national to prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and diverting products to China by using falsified export documents for at least seven years.
Aug. 5, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo convenes a roundtable discussion with investors to discuss “non-market actions from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that threaten to distort the market for mature node (or “legacy”) semiconductors.”
Aug. 6, 2024: The U.S. Department of State calls the PRC’s August 5 announcement that they will begin scheduling three essential fentanyl precursors “a valuable step forward.”
Aug. 6, 2024: The U.S. National Security Council releases a statement on the People’s Republic of China’s announcement of fentanyl scheduling actions, calling it “a valuable step forward” and the “third significant scheduling action by the PRC” since bilateral counternarcotics cooperation resumed in November 2023.
Aug. 6, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin release a joint statement with two Australian officials following the 34th Australia-U.S. Ministerial Consultations in which the parties affirmed the “importance of cooperating with China,” expressed “grave concern about China’s dangerous and escalatory behavior” in the South China Sea and about activities around Taiwan, and “expressed their disappointment that China rejected all the recommendations made by Australia and the United States during the January 2024 Universal Periodic Review of China’s human rights record,” among other comments.
Aug. 6, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, responding to a question on Taiwan at a press availability alongside Australian ministers, says “[a]s I’ve said a number of times, I don’t think conflict with China is either imminent or inevitable.”
Aug. 6, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice convicts a naturalized U.S. citizen of Chinese descent in New York of acting and conspiring to act as a covert Chinese agent since at least 2006, “masquerading as a pro-democracy activist all while covertly collecting and reporting sensitive information about its members to the PRC’s intelligence service.”
Aug. 6, 2024: U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, tells the media that “[w]e remain dissatisfied about the lack of transparency” about an incident in early June where four instructors from a U.S. college were attacked in China, adding that Washington’s concerns have been made “abundantly clear” to the government in Beijing.
Aug. 7-8, 2024: The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, along with Australia, Canada and the Philippines, conduct a Multilateral Maritime Cooperative Activity within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone and release a statement that “reaffirm[s] the 2016 South China Sea Arbitral Tribunal Award as a final and legally binding decision.”
Aug. 13, 2024: U.S. and French naval forces conduct bilateral operations in the Philippine Sea “in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
Aug. 13, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice accepts the guilty plea of a U.S. Army soldier and intelligence analyst who was indicted in March 2024 over conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, including technical data related to U.S. military weapons systems, to an individual who lived in Hong Kong and is suspected of being associated with the Chinese Government in exchange for money.
Aug. 13, 2024: U.S. and French naval forces conduct bilateral operations in the Philippines Sea “in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
Aug. 15-16, 2024: Senior officials from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the People’s Bank of China lead the Fifth Meeting of the Financial Working Group Between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China in Shanghai, China, concluding with an exchange of letters in support of coordination in times of financial stress.
Aug. 19, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a press statement saying that the U.S. “stands with its ally the Philippines and condemns the dangerous actions by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) against lawful Philippine maritime operations in the South China Sea,” stating that the “PRC ships employed reckless maneuvers, deliberately colliding with two Philippine Coast Guard ships” earlier that day.
Aug. 20, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, speaking in a call with Philippine National Security Advisor Eduardo M. Año, condemns China’s “deliberate collision with two Philippine Coast Guard vessels operating lawfully near Sabina Shoal” and reiterates U.S. support for the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.
Aug. 22, 2024: The guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson (DDG 114) conducts a routine transit through the Taiwan Strait “in accordance with international law…through a corridor in the Strait that is beyond the territorial sea of any coastal state.”
Aug. 23, 2024: The U.S. Department of State announces, along with the Department of the Treasury, the designation of nearly 400 entities and individuals, including entities in the People’s Republic of China, in new measures designed to degrade Russia’s international supply chains and wartime economy.
Aug. 23, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice announces that a U.S. citizen and Chinese immigrant has pleaded guilty to conspiring to serve as a “cooperative contact” for and gathering information for the PRC’s Ministry of State Security.
Aug. 26, 2024: U.S. Customs and Border Protection top official Troy Miller, speaking in an interview, discusses how illegal shipments of pure fentanyl have been traced back to China since the start of concerns began over a decade ago and the efforts that have been taken since.
Aug. 27-28, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, in his first visit to China as National Security Advisor, meets with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi outside Beijing, China, where they hold “candid, substantive, and constructive discussions on a range of bilateral, regional, and global issues” during which they note the importance of “regular, ongoing military-to-military communications…concrete steps to tackle the climate crisis,” and maintaining open lines of communication, among other issues.
Aug. 28, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan meets with General Zhang Youxia, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission in Beijing, China, where Sullivan emphasized the two countries’ mutual “responsibility to prevent competition from veering into conflict or confrontation.”
Aug. 29, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping as part of “ongoing efforts to maintain channels of communication and responsibly manage the relationship.”
Aug. 29, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan gives remarks before the press in Beijing, China, during which he lauds the progress made in recent high-level communication between the U.S. and China over the last two years, reiterating that “competition with China does not have to lead to conflict or confrontation” if responsible management is achieved.
Aug. 29, 2024: U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai releases a statement recognizing and applauding Canada’s decision to “take strong action against the PRC’s state-directed, unfair, and anti-competitive non-market policies and practices.”
Aug. 30, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a statement on the second anniversary of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Assessment on the Human Rights Situation in Xinjiang, expressing disappointment that, after two years, the PRC “continues to reject the OHCHR assessment’s findings” that “serious human rights violations have been committed in Xinjiang” and urges the PRC to “end these ongoing atrocities.”
Aug. 31, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a press statement saying that the U.S. “stands with its ally, the Philippines, and condemns the dangerous and escalatory actions by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) against lawful Philippine maritime operations in the vicinity of Sabina Shoal in the South China Sea,” stating that a Chinese Coast Guard vessel “deliberately collided three times” with a Philippine Coast Guard vessel operating in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.
Sept. 4, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin holds a call with Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr., during which they discuss the “dangerous and escalatory actions by the People’s Republic of China against lawful Philippine maritime operations in the South China Sea.”
Sept. 4, 2024: FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaking at a U.S. Department of Justice Election Threats Task Force Meeting, says the FBI will “continue to keep a close eye on China’s efforts to denigrate down-ballot candidates it sees as a threat, and on their broader efforts to sow discord.”
Sept. 4, 2024: U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland says the U.S. will be “relentlessly aggressive in countering and disrupting attempts by Russia and Iran — as well as China or any other foreign malign actor — to interfere in our elections and undermine our democracy.”
Sept. 4-6, 2024: U.S. Senior Advisor to the President for International Climate Policy John Podesta and China Special Envoy for Climate Change Liu Zhenmin co-lead the second meeting of the U.S.-China Working Group on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s in Beijing, China, during which both sides reaffirm their intention to jointly host, with the COP29 Presidency of Azerbaijan, a Methane and Other Non-CO2 Greenhouse Gases Summit at COP29.
Sept. 6, 2024: U.S. Senior Advisor to the President for International Climate Policy John Podesta and U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, along with their Chinese counterparts, hold the U.S.-China Circular Economy Cooperation Forum and U.S.-China Subnational Climate Action Roundtable in Beijing, China.
Sept. 6, 2024: The U.S. Departments of State, Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, and Treasury jointly release an Amendment to the July 2021 Business Advisory on Risks and Considerations for Businesses Operating in Hong Kong “to highlight new and heightened risks” for U.S. companies operating in Hong Kong.
Sept. 7, 2024: U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Marisa Lago and China’s Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen hold the second Vice-Ministerial meeting of the U.S.-China Commercial Issues Working Group in Tianjin, China, with both sides agreeing to continue their regular engagement.
Sept. 8-11, 2024: U.S. and Italian naval forces, in partnership with the Australian air force, conduct a multilateral exercise in the South China Sea “in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
Sept. 9, 2024: U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai holds a podcast interview with Bloomberg in which she aims to “paint[s]…the picture of the reality of the U.S.-China trade relationship, China’s role in the global economy.”
Sept. 9, 2024: The U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong & Macau releases a statement by the Media Freedom Coalition, also signed by 24 other countries, that urges the Hong Kong and China authorities “to abide by their international human rights commitments and legal obligations.”
Sept. 9, 2024: Head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Adm. Samuel Paparo holds a video teleconference with the commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s Southern Theater Command Gen. Wu Yanan, as part of efforts to resume high-level military-to-military communication.
Sept. 9-10, 2024: U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and his European External Action Service counterpart hold the seventh high-level meeting of the U.S.-EU Dialogue on China during which they discuss an array of bilateral and multilateral issues relevant to China and reaffirm the intent to “continue close coordination on China and the Indo-Pacific.”
Sept. 10, 2024: The U.S. Department of Defense releases a joint statement following the 15th Republic of Korea-United States-Japan Defense Trilateral Talks during which the three sides shared perspectives and concerns on the “dangerous and aggressive behavior” by the PRC in the South China Sea and reaffirmed their positions on Taiwan.
Sept. 12, 2024: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security seizes over 350 internet domains allegedly being used for the illegal importation of switches and silencers from China.
Sept. 12, 2024: Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder confirms in a press conference that a representative from the Pentagon did attend the Zhejiang Forum in China, at the invitation of the PRC, reemphasizing Secretary Lloyd Austin’s belief that “we do not believe that conflict is inevitable or imminent” and that such venues are very important to communicate and prevent miscalculations.
Sept. 12, 2024: U.S. Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen, delivering remarks at Columbia Law School, mentions China repeatedly alongside Russia, Iran and other “authoritarian regimes…working to stoke divisions in our society for their own benefit.”
Sept. 13, 2024: The Biden-Harris Administration announces new actions to counter the “increased abuse of the de minimis exemption,” the majority of which is conducted by several China-founded e-commerce platforms.
Sept. 13, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, after the U.S. announced the increased use of the de minimis exemption, defends the increase, saying that “for too long, Chinese e-commerce platforms have skirted tariffs by abusing the de minimis exemption.”
Sept. 13, 2024: The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announces that the final modifications concerning the statutory review of the tariff actions in the Section 301 investigation of the People’s Republic of China’s Acts, Policies, and Practices Related to Technology Transfer, Intellectual Property, and Innovation were largely adopted.
Sept. 14-15, 2024: Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia Michael Chase meets with his Chinese counterpart Deputy Director of the Central Military Commission Office for International Military Cooperation Maj. Gen. Ye Jiang in Beijing for the 18th U.S.-PRC Defense Policy Coordination Talks.
Sept. 16, 2024: U.S. Secretary of the Air Force France Kendall, while giving a keynote address at a public conference, repeatedly emphasizes China’s ambitions, heavy investments and willingness to “push boundaries of acceptable behavior,” also adding how he has instructed personnel to “stop referring to the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army as a ‘future’, or ‘emerging’, or ‘potential’ threat…[as i]t is a serious threat today.”
Sept. 17, 2024: A U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon transits the Taiwan Strait in international airspace “operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law.”
Sept. 18, 2024: The U.S. Department of the Navy, led by the Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti, releases the Chief of Naval Operations Navigation Plan for America’s Warfighting Navy 2024 (NAVPLAN 24), most of which is centered around achieving “readiness for the possibility of war with the People’s Republic of China by 2027” because the “PLA Navy, Rocket Force, Aerospace Force, Air Force, and Cyberspace Force are coalescing into an integrated warfighting ecosystem specifically designed to defeat ours, backed by a massive industrial base…[that] is on a wartime footing.”
Sept. 18, 2024: U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti, while introducing NAVPLAN 24, describes the PRC as a “pacing challenge and a complex, multi-domain and multi-axis threat…that is backed by a massive defense industrial base” preparing for the potential of war.
Sept. 18, 2024: The U.S. National Security Agency, along with national and global partners, release a joint cybersecurity advisory assessing that PRC-linked cyber actors have “compromised thousands of Internet-connected devices” to create a botnet, which has been controlled and managed by Integrity Technology Group, a PRC-based company “with links to the PRC government,” since mid-2021.
Sept. 18, 2024: FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaking at the 2024 Aspen Cyber Summit, announces that the FBI and its partners have successfully disrupted a second Chinese botnet known as Flax Typhoon, like Volt Typhoon “working at the direction of the Chinese government,” that had been targeting critical infrastructure via hundreds of thousands of internet-connected devices.
Sept. 19-20, 2024: The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Under Secretary for International Affairs Jay Shambaugh and Vice Minister of Finance at China’s Ministry of Finance Liao Min co-lead the fifth meeting of the Economic Working Group (EWG) in Beijing, China. While in Beijing, the Treasury delegation also meets with Vice Premier He Lifeng to whom they pass along U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen’s positive sentiments on the efficacy of the EWG.
Sept. 20, 2024: Head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Adm. Samuel Paparo meets with the commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s Southern Theater Command Gen. Wu Yanan during the 26th annual Indo-Pacific Chiefs of Defense in Hawaii.
Sept. 23, 2024: The White House releases a fact sheet titled “Protecting America from Connected Vehicle Technology from Countries of Concern,” specifically referring to the People’s Republic of China and Russia and starting with the following statement: “Chinese automakers are seeking to dominate connected vehicle technologies in the United States and globally…”
Sept. 24, 2024: U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking before the 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, emphasizes that the U.S. “seek[s] to responsibly manage the competition with China so it does not veer into conflict,” adding that he “appreciates” the recently resumed collaboration with China to halt the flow of deadly synthetic narcotics.
Sept. 24, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in his remarks at the UN Security Council Ministerial Meeting on Ukraine, names China as “the top provider of machine tools, microelectronics, and other items that Russia is using to rebuild, to restock, to ramp up its war machine and sustain its brutal aggression.”
Sept. 24, 2024: The G7 Foreign Ministers put out a joint release addressing various global issues, including how they “seek constructive and stable relations with China…[and] recognize the importance of China in global trade,” but also remain “seriously concerned” about maritime security in several locations across the Indo-Pacific as well as the “human rights situation in China.”
Sept. 24, 2024: The U.S., on behalf of the United Nations’ Core Group on Xinjiang, presents a joint statement on Xinjiang on the Second Anniversary of the OHCHR’s Assessment, which expresses regret over China’s lack of action to meaningfully address the assessment’s findings.
Sept. 25, 2024: U.S. President Joe Biden, providing remarks before the 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, says he “appreciate[s] the collaboration” recently resumed with China on counternarcotics and notes that the U.S. seeks to “responsibly manage the competition with China so it does not veer into conflict.”
Sept. 25, 2024: The U.S. Department of Defense spokesperson, responding to a question about the PRC’s ICBM test launch, notes “we believe that that [advanced notice from China about the launch] was a good thing. That was a step in the right direction. And it does lead, you know, to preventing any misperception or miscalculation.”
Sept. 25, 2024: U.S. National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi, giving remarks in New York City, depicts a U.S. and Chinese comparison of progress in clean manufacturing: “As U.S. production declined, production in China rose to take its place, driven in part by China’s non-market policies. Today, more than half of the world’s aluminum is made in China. That’s an industrial competitiveness problem. It’s also a climate problem. Because the average ton of aluminum made in China is 65 percent more emissions-intensive than in the U.S.”
Sept. 26, 2024: The U.S. Embassy in China highlights information about a historical photo exhibition on U.S.-China cooperation during World War II at the Beijing American Center.
Sept. 27, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with PRC Director of the CCP Central Foreign Affairs Commission and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the margins of the 79th UN General Assembly in New York City and hold “candid, substantive, and productive discussions on a range of bilateral, regional, and global issues” while emphasizing the need to maintain open lines of communication.
Sept. 27, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, responding to a press question in New York City on sanctions on China related to their dual-use assistance to Russia, clarifies: “Our intent is not to decouple Russia from China. Their relationship is their business. But insofar as that relationship involves providing Russia what it needs to continue this war, that’s a problem and it’s a problem for us and it’s a problem for many other countries…”
Sept. 28, 2024: The U.S. naval forces, alongside counterparts from Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines, conduct a Maritime Cooperative Activity within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone in the South China Sea to demonstrate their “shared commitment to the rules-based international order.”
Oct. 2, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken releases a congratulatory message to the people of the PRC on the occasion of its 75th National Day, adding that the U.S. is “committed to responsibly managing our bilateral relationship with the PRC and will maintain open lines of communication.”
Oct. 2, 2024: The Department of Homeland Security adds two China-based entities, one steel company and one aspartame company, to the Uygur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List.
Oct. 2, 2024: U.S. President Joe Biden signs into law S. 2228, the “Building Chips in America Act of 2023.”
Oct. 7, 2024: U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai releases a statement welcoming the European Union’s latest action in its anti-subsidy investigation on imports of battery electric vehicles from China.
Oct. 7, 2024: The U.S. Department of the Navy releases a Cyber Security Awareness Month statement that points to China as the “most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. Government, private-sector, and critical Infrastructure networks.”
Oct. 8, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo conducts a call with Minister of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China Wang Wentao to candidly exchange concerns and maintain an open channel of communication.
Oct. 8, 2024: U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Marisa Lago, speaking at a U.S. Trade and Development Agency civil nuclear energy workshop, notes that 80% of new nuclear reactors being made since 2017 have been either Russian or Chinese designs, adding that the U.S. is “monitoring uranium imports from China and other countries to ensure that they aren’t circumventing U.S. sanctions on Russian imports.”
Oct. 10, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice files a civil lawsuit against an American owner of a U.S.-based corporation that imported Chinese-manufactured solar panels into the U.S., alleging misclassification and failure to pay duties.
Oct. 10, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking at the ASEAN Summit with the United States in Laos, says the U.S. “remain[s] concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful actions in the South and East China Seas, which…contradict commitments to peaceful resolution of disputes.”
Oct. 10, 2024: U.S. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, responding to a press question on potential Chinese military activities near Taiwan on Taiwan’s National Day, states “we see no…justification, certainly, for a routine annual celebration to be used as a pretext for military exercises” and urge Beijing to “act with restraint,” adding that the United States’ “One China policy has not changed, and we’ve been really consistent about that in the past three and a half years.”
Oct. 11, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, responding to a press question in Laos on potential Chinese military activities near Taiwan on Taiwan’s National Day, states “China should not use [the so-called 10/10 speech] in any fashion as a pretext for provocative actions…we want to reinforce…the imperative of preserving the status quo.”
Oct. 11, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken participates in the 12th ASEAN-U.S. Summit in Laos during which he addresses “pressing geopolitical issues including provocative PRC actions in the South China Sea, East China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait.”
Oct. 11, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken participates in the 19th East Asia Summit during which he addresses the “PRC’s provocations” in the South China Sea and East China Sea and reaffirms the “U.S. commitment to maintaining open channels of communication with the PRC.”
Oct. 13, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a statement expressing serious concerns over the “unwarranted” People’s Liberation Army joint military drills in the Taiwan Strait and around Taiwan.
Oct. 14, 2024: The U.S. Department of Defense releases a statement on the People’s Liberation Army exercise, JOINT SWORD 2024B, conducted around Taiwan the day after Taiwan’s national day, calling this “military pressure operation…irresponsible, disproportionate, and destabilizing” while concluding that the U.S. remains committed to its longstanding one China policy.
Oct. 15, 2024: U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, speaking in a public think tank interview, says China’s “relentless modernization and expansion” is the “pacing challenge” for the U.S., and that the Pentagon holds an “asymmetric advantage” over China and Russia due to the network of U.S. allies.
Oct. 15, 2024: U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, speaking at the Zero-Carbon Climate Summit in Beijing, highlights recent U.S.-China activities and positive progress, summarizing that the U.S. and China “have a common interest, and a common responsibility, to address this crisis, together.” Burns also noted, “respectfully…China is also – while it’s the world leader in renewable technology – China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, at 28% of all global emissions, while the U.S. is at 10%.”
Oct. 17, 2024: U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics Daleep Singh, speaking in an Alliance for American Manufacturing event, says that China’s overcapacity is “not abstract. You can see it in the numbers…and we’ve got to do something about it.”
Oct. 17, 2024: The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announces sanctions on three PRC-based entities and one individual for their involvement in the development and production of Russia’s Garpiya series long-range attack drone that has been used in Russia’s war against Ukraine, marking the first U.S. sanctions imposed on PRC entities directly developing and producing complete weapons systems in partnership with Russian firms.
Oct. 20, 2024: The guided-missile destroyer USS Higgins (DDG 76) and Royal Canadian Navy frigate HMCS Vancouver (FFH 331) conduct a routine transit through the Taiwan Strait “in accordance with international law…through a high seas corridor in the Strait that is beyond the territorial sea of any coastal state.”
Oct. 21, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice issues a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would help establish a new program to prevent access to U.S. sensitive data by China and other countries of concern.
Oct. 21, 2024: U.S. White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby, responding to a press question on China’s Russia-related activities, notes “I don’t think the PRC has ever gotten that message” that it can continue to do whatever it wants without consequences, as “we’ve been none too shy about making our concerns known…And we’ve sanctioned them. We have had very frank conversations with Chinese leaders…So I think our message to the PRC has been clear and constant and remains so.”
Oct. 21-24, 2024: U.S. Department of State Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs Deputy Assistant Secretary Robert Garverick leads a U.S. delegation to Taiwan to prepare for the fifth U.S.-Taiwan Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue and discuss economic issues.
Oct. 23, 2024: U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power, responding to a press question in Cambodia on China’s growing presence in Cambodia and local democratization, emphasizes the U.S. goal is to strengthen a country’s path to independence, not dependence, and supplies a comparison of the U.S. and PRC development models: “The United States invests about nine dollars in grants for every dollar of loan that the United States provides. The PRC invests about nine dollars in loans for every dollar in grants.”
Oct. 23, 2024: U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, speaking at a Chinese art exhibition at his residence in Beijing, lauds the exhibition artists and emphasizes the “shared humanity” that exists between the Chinese and American people.
Oct. 23, 2024: U.S. Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Jose Fernandez leads the virtually-held fifth U.S.-Taiwan Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue, conducted under the auspices of the American Institute in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States.
Oct. 24, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice announces the indictments placed against eight China-based chemical companies and eight employees who are charged with alleged fentanyl manufacturing and distribution.
Oct. 24, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, speaking on AI and national security at a public event, explains that, since “[w]e know that China is building its own technological ecosystem with digital infrastructure that won’t protect sensitive data, that can enable mass surveillance and censorship, that can spread misinformation…that can make countries vulnerable to coercion,” strong partnerships are invaluable.
Oct. 25, 2024: The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Under Secretary for International Affairs Jay Shambaugh and Vice Minister of Finance at China’s Ministry of Finance Liao Min co-lead the sixth meeting of the Economic Working Group in Washington, D.C. on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings, discussing areas of both concerns and cooperation.
Oct. 28, 2024: The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Assistant Secretary for International Affairs Brent Neiman and Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China Xuan Changneng co-lead the sixth meeting of the Financial Working Group in Washington, D.C. on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings, discussing areas of both concerns and cooperation.
Oct. 28, 2024: The U.S. Department of the Treasury issues a final rule to implement Executive Order 14105, “Addressing United States Investments in Certain National Security Technologies and Products in Countries of Concern,” in which the PRC had been identified as a country of concern.
Oct. 28, 2024: U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman, speaking to Bloomberg, says the U.S. has “left an open running room for China” in Africa to the detriment of U.S. industry and argues the need for the U.S. to start showing up in Africa.
Oct. 28-30, 2024: The U.S. Department of Commerce holds a FinTech Business Development Mission to Hong Kong to give U.S. fintech companies the opportunity to engage with Hong Kong’s leading financial institutions, visit innovation hubs, and attend networking events.
Oct. 29, 2024: A senior administration official, speaking in a press call on the new rules to address U.S. investments in certain technologies, states: “The People’s Republic of China has a stated goal, as you know: to develop key sensitive technologies that will directly support the PRC’s military modernization and related activities, including weapons development, and it has exploited U.S. investments to develop domestic, military, and intelligence capabilities.”
Oct. 30, 2024: The U.S. Department of Defense and its South Korean counterparts release the 56th Security Consultative Meeting Joint Communique in which it stresses the importance of the entire global community, including the People’s Republic of China, in fully implementing UN Security Council resolutions that dissuade and delay North Korea’s nuclear development.
Oct. 30, 2024: The U.S. Department of State announces, along with the Departments of the Treasury and Commerce, the sanctioning of nearly 400 entities and individuals, including entities in the People’s Republic of China, for “enabling Russia’s prosecution of its illegal war.”
Oct. 30, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a fact sheet reflecting on the Department’s last three years of efforts to strengthen national security, in which the first critical missions listed is the successful establishment of the Office of China Coordination, also known as “China House,” a “whole-of-enterprise approach to strategic competition and diplomatic relations with the PRC.”
Oct. 30, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice accepts a guilty pleas of two men, one being a Chinese national, who were members of a transnational money laundering organization related to the importation of illegal drugs.
Oct. 31, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice files a civil lawsuit against an American owner of a U.S.-based corporation that imported Chinese-manufactured bedroom furniture into the U.S., alleging misclassification and failure to pay duties.
Oct. 31, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, responding to a press question at a joint press availability following a 2+2 ministerial meeting with the Republic of Korea, says, “when it comes to China, as a member of the United Nations Security Council, we would and should expect no less” effort in helping to halt North Korea’s provocative actions, and “I think they know well the concerns that we have and the expectations that, both in word and deed, they’ll use the influence that they have to work to curb these activities. So we’ll see if they take action.”
Oct. 31, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, responding to a press question at a joint press availability following a 2+2 ministerial meeting with the Republic of Korea, says “I would refer you to the PRC for their position, but if China is serious about its desire for de-escalation, it should be asking Russia some hard questions at this point.”
Oct. 31, 2024: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security adds three PRC-based textile companies to the Uygur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List.
Oct. 31, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a statement condemning the “unjust imprisonment” by the People’s of Republic of China of a human rights lawyer and his wife on October 29, calling it a demonstration of the “PRC’s continuing efforts to silence those who speak out for human rights and the rule of law” and objecting to the trial’s lack of transparency.
Nov. 6, 2024: U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns provides brief remarks at the 2024 Election Watch Party at the U.S. Embassy to the People’s Republic of China, in which he expresses hope that “Chinese friends…might see and that you might feel and that you might experience the power of the people’s vote and the power of ‘We the People’ in American democracy.”
Nov. 6-8, 2024: Representatives from U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Pacific Fleet, U.S. Pacific Air Forces, and U.S. Coast Guard travel to Qingdao, China to meet with the People’s Republic of China People’s Liberation Army Navy and Air Force for the semi-annual working group and annual plenary session of the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement, meetings which “serve to clarify intent and reduce the risk of misperception, miscalculation, or accidents, and therefore help foster stability within the U.S.-PRC military-to-military relationship.”
Nov. 7, 2024: U.S. President Joe Biden extends the national emergency with respect to the threat from securities investments that finance certain companies of the People’s Republic of China for one year beyond its expiration date of November 12, 2024 as the “PRC military-industrial complex…continues to constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat.”
Nov. 8, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a statement supporting the Philippines’ enactment of the Maritime Zones Act signed into law by Philippine President Marcos on November 8, 2024, stating that this “routine” law “defines the Philippines internal waters, archipelagic waters, territorial sea, contiguous zone, exclusive economic zone, and continental shelf in line with the Convention.”
Nov. 12, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice accepts a guilty plea of a Chinese dual citizen over a cryptocurrency investment money laundering scheme that laundered over $73 million.
Nov. 12, 2024: The U.S. Department of State, along with the People’s Republic of China and Azerbaijan, jointly convene “The Sprint to Cut Climate Super Pollutants: COP 29 Summit on Methane and Non-CO2 GHGs” to collaboratively battle and bring attention to super pollutant greenhouse gases.
Nov. 13, 2024: The U.S. FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) release a joint statement on the continued investigation into the PRC’s “targeting of commercial telecommunications infrastructure has revealed a broad and significant cyber espionage campaign,” noting that actors have been identified.
Nov. 13, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, delivering remarks at a ceremony to sign the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort Pact in Washington, D.C., says “Russia and China are strengthening their capabilities in the Arctic, and we cannot afford to allow our own United States Coast Guard and United States Navy to fall behind.”
Nov. 13, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, responding to press questions on upcoming administrative changes, opines that succeeding in long-term competition with the PRC “will require a bipartisan foundation” and “if you look out at a strategic level, the competition with the People’s Republic of China is going to be defining for what the world looks like over the course of the next 10, 20, and 30 years, and so that has got to be a paramount priority for the incoming administration.”
Nov. 13, 2024: U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai meets with Minister-without-Portfolio Jen-ni Yang of Taiwan on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Ministerial Meeting in Lima, Peru, during which the two sides highlight the importance of mutual economic and trade ties and laud the progress made thus far through the United States-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade.
Nov. 14, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, speaking to press en route to Lima, Peru, notes that “there’s an interesting dynamic where every time we fly to South America or Africa, the press writes the story: ‘China is doing a lot; America is doing a little’” while the numbers depict a different story.
Nov. 14, 2024: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announces the indictment of a Chinese chemical company and its senior leaders for allegedly selling fentanyl precursor chemicals and xylazine globally.
Nov. 15, 2024: U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, delivering remarks for a Drug Enforcement Administration summit, states “[w]e know that the fentanyl supply chain, which ends with the death of Americans, often starts with chemical companies in China.”
Nov. 16, 2024: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security completes a third large-frame charter removal flight to China of Chinese nationals with no lawful basis to remain in the United States in “yet another example of the Department’s ongoing cooperation with the PRC.”
Nov. 16, 2024: The U.S. Department of Defense releases the Australia-Japan-United States Trilateral Defense Ministers’ Meeting November 2024 Joint Statement that condemns the “dangerous conduct” by the PRC in the South China Sea and reiterates the four countries’ “strong opposition to any unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion.”
Nov. 16, 2024: U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in Lima, Peru and hold a “candid, constructive discussion on a range of bilateral, regional, and global issues, including areas of cooperation and areas of difference,” both stressing the importance of “all countries treating each other with respect and finding a way to live alongside each other peacefully.”
Nov. 17, 2024: U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, speaking to the press following President Joe Biden’s meeting with President Xi Jinping in Peru, shares that President Biden did “reinforce the point [to President Xi Jinping] that these next two months are a time of transition in the United States and a time where stability in the U.S.-China relationship is essential…[but] wasn’t projecting ahead to what was going to happen after January 20th.”
Nov. 18, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, during talks with his counterparts while visiting the Philippines, discusses the “repeated harassment” by the PRC and underscores continued U.S. support for the Philippines.
Nov. 19, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a statement condemning the “unjust sentencing” of 45 defendants in Hong Kong’s National Security Law trial of pro-democracy advocates known as the NSL 47, stating such “harsh sentences erode confidence in Hong Kong’s judicial system and harm the city’s international reputation” and calling on the PRC government and Hong Kong authorities to uphold Hong Kong’s judicial independence.
Nov. 19, 2024: U.S. Principal Deputy Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Jed Royal, speaking at the 2024 Mt. Fuji Dialogue, notes the Indo-Pacific’s “regional security landscape is heavily impacted by China’s rapid military modernization, increasing provocations abroad, and comprehensive repression at home,” adding that “[t]he combination of emerging capability, operational activity, and routine dismissal of regional and global norms cannot be explained as simply defensive in nature.”
Nov. 19, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice sentences a Chinese citizen and U.S. resident for acting as an unregistered agent of the government of the PRC and bribing an Internal Revenue Service agent “in connection with a plot to target U.S.-based practitioners of Falun Gong.”
Nov. 20, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice announces the guilty plea of a Chinese national who admitted to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Nov. 21, 2024: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, during a joint press briefing in the Philippines, reiterates how the PRC’s behavior in the South China Sea “has been concerning” and how that concern has been shared with Chinese counterparts “a number of times in a number of forums.”
Nov. 22, 2024: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announces the addition of 29 PRC-based companies to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List, bringing the total number of entities on the UFLPA Entity List to 107.
Nov. 25, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice sentences a U.S. citizen for “conspiring to act as an agent of the People’s Republic of China,” having “obtained a wide variety of information” at the request of the PRC’s Ministry of State Security.
Nov. 25, 2024: The U.S. Department of Justice charges two men with robbing a Chinese business in Puerto Rico.
Nov. 26, 2024: A U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon transits the Taiwan Strait in international airspace “operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law.”
Nov. 26, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases the Group of Seven Foreign Ministers Meeting Statement that, among other notes, states their desire for “constructive and stable relations with China” and “readiness to cooperate with China to address global challenges,” recognizes the “importance of China in global trade,” and calls on China to “refrain from adopting export control measures” and “step up efforts to promote international peace and security,” especially in regards to Russia, North Korea, and the East and South China Seas.
Nov. 26, 2024: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking at a press availability following the G7 ministerial meeting in Italy, gives several remarks on China, most notably: “G7 is increasingly aligned on our view of the economic and security risks posed by the People’s Republic of China, the policies it’s pursuing, even as we recognize the need for constructive engagement. Over four years we have forged much greater convergence, more than ever before, on common approaches to China…we’re now engaging China and the challenges it poses from a position of strength.” Blinken also remarks that “China has an important role to play in using its influence – its influence with the DPRK, North Korea, as well as with Russia – to cease these activities…as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, we, I think, would all look to China to use its influence to try to bring this to an end.”
Nov. 27, 2024: The U.S. Department of State updates its Travel Advisory for Mainland China and Hong Kong, shifting them from Level 3 (“Reconsider travel”) to Level 2 (“Exercise increased caution”).
Nov. 29, 2024: The U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong & Macau releases an updated summary of their tracking list on “Arrests Under 2020 National Security Law (NSL) and 2024 Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (SNSO) in Hong Kong.”
Nov. 29, 2024: The U.S. Department of State releases a statement condemning the “unjust sentencing” of PRC journalist Dong Yuyu, saying it “highlight[s] the PRC’s failure to live up to its commitments under international law and its own constitutional guarantees to all its citizens” and calling for his immediate release.
Nov. 29, 2024: U.S. President Joe Biden, responding to a press question about President-elect Trump’s proposed tariffs, says “we have reached a relationship where there’s a status quo ante with regard to China…we’ve set up a hotline between President Xi and myself, as well as through our military — a direct line. The one thing I’m confident about Xi is he doesn’t want to make a mistake. And I mean that sincerely. And I’m not saying that he is our best buddy, but he — he understands what’s at stake.”
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Trade wars are neither good nor easy to win