Commentary: What can the US do to stabilize its relationship with China?

National security adviser Jake Sullivan’s recent trip to Beijing is a good sign that President Joe Biden’s administration is taking U.S.-China relations seriously. While the visit did not result in any bilateral agreements, the two leaders agreed on having a near-term phone call.

As the fifth meeting between Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in the last two years, the visit at least shows that diplomatic channels are open. The selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz, a qualified China hand, as the Democratic vice presidential candidate, moreover, seems to offer more evidence that Democrats now understand the stakes in this most pivotal bilateral relationship.

This has not always been the case. Many China watchers had the initial hope that the Biden administration would set the bilateral relationship on a more steady, predictable path after the volatile Donald Trump years when U.S.-China relations seemed to careen from crisis to crisis. However, they were substantially disappointed by the Biden administration’s first foray into China diplomacy when an early, high-level summit meeting in 2021 seemed to devolve into an acrimonious shouting match. More concretely, the Biden administration has seemingly chosen to adopt many of the hardline policies of its predecessor. The wide-ranging tariffs on Chinese exports have been maintained. Likewise, bellicose policies toward Beijing have continued to be pervasive in Biden’s Pentagon with a full embrace of Trump’s policies of “Great Power Competition” and also the “Indo-Pacific Strategy.”

To be sure, one of the major aggravating issues now in U.S.-China relations is the new global strategic environment resulting from Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Although Beijing professes neutrality and has not sent arms to Russia, Chinese diplomats still evince substantial sympathy for the Kremlin and the Biden administration has dubbed China as the foremost “enabler” of the war since its ballooning trade with Russia helps to oil Moscow’s war machine.

Washington has just levied new sanctions against Chinese companies due to their ongoing relationship with Russian entities involved in the war effort. Despite such pressures, the U.S. and China still managed to achieve well over half a trillion in bilateral trade during 2023. Yet, the present administration has rebranded the “decoupling” policy as “de-risking” and acted to define major new limits on U.S.-China commercial contacts, especially in the domain of high-tech. In particular, the CHIPS Act could be Biden’s most important legacy for China policy in that it sought to hinder the ability of Beijing’s corporations to fabricate advanced microchips.

With respect to the volatile issue of Taiwan, the situation evinces ever more tendencies toward escalation and even spinning out of control. Hope for a more balanced approach resting on “guardrails,” were dashed when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022, setting off large-scale Chinese military exercises around the island. The new pervasiveness of drone weapons (an area of Chinese military strength), as well as Beijing’s willingness to pressure Taiwan suggest that the Taiwan issue could experience even more instability in the near future. President Biden has said no less than four times that he would defend Taiwan. But these brazen assertions, a departure from Washington’s traditional policy of “strategic ambiguity,” come against the backdrop of Beijing’s rapid buildup of both its navy and its nuclear forces. Are the two superpowers careening toward a direct military conflict?

While the Biden administration is to be commended for keeping direct and high-level lines of communication open with Beijing, including with the latest Sullivan visit, the current administration has quite clearly failed to stabilize the superpower relationship in any fundamental way. Looking toward a new administration in Washington in 2025, some pragmatic steps are required to put U.S.-China relations back on track to steer it away from the militarized rivalry now so entrenched and to diminish the growing chances of catastrophic war.

Above all, Washington should embrace realism and restraint by signaling a return to “strategic ambiguity” and much stricter conformity with the “one China policy” first skillfully developed by Richard Nixon’s administration to extricate the U.S. from the Chinese Civil War. Moreover, Washington should douse regional tensions by resisting the temptation to pour ever more U.S. military forces into the western Pacific, for example, into the Philippines where the U.S. is quite provocatively upgrading bases closest to the Taiwan Strait.

Regarding the Ukraine war, the U.S. should reform its accusatory approach toward Beijing and it may have to even agree that China could play a useful role as a mediator — a role Kyiv seems to have recognized recently. Policy innovation will be required to try to stabilize the new U.S.-China race in nuclear weapons development, and this should include full consideration of Beijing’s proposals. Finally, high-tech will remain a problem area, but there is no reason not to move forward more robustly in other areas of commercial promise, from agriculture to infrastructure.

A Chinese analysis on the eve of the Sullivan visit raised the interesting point that this visit might constitute the U.S. national security adviser’s first-ever official trip to China. This points to a problematic issue. Like Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Sullivan’s background suggests little acquaintance with the Asia-Pacific region and a traditional focus on Europe with some background in the Middle East as well. For more effective U.S. foreign policy in the 21 st century, Washington may have to look for leaders with a much deeper knowledge of Asia.

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Lyle Goldstein is director of Asia engagement at Washington think tank Defense Priorities.

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