China Focus Report Presents Joint Recommendations for the U.S.-China Relationship

The U.S.-China relationship is the most consequential bilateral relationship in the world. How it is managed will have a huge impact on not only the well-being of the two nations but also global peace and prosperity. The nature of this relationship began to change drastically in the waning years of the Obama Administration. President Trump’s decision to wage a trade war on China in 2018 and the outbreak of the pandemic in early 2020 had catapulted the bilateral relationship into one of hostility, acrimony, and even mutual fear. President Biden tried to manage the bilateral competition responsibly but was not able to put it on a relatively strong footing until November 2023. Before both American and Chinese leaders were able to implement the so-called San Francisco vision, Trump was elected again. It is fair to say both President Trump and President Xi Jinping have learned a few lessons from their interaction during the first Trump administration, when the relationship was the rockiest since normalization in 1979. And it is also fair to say it is a huge mistake to assume the inevitability of the collision between their respective plans to make their countries great again. Is there a way for the two countries to do their uttermost to protect their own core interests while finding common ground to peacefully and productively co-exist? It is with this goal that researchers from the Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and veteran American researchers and former managers of U.S.-China relations who are regular contributors to U.S.-China Perception Monitor, began to brainstorm on how each country would like the other country to manage this volatile relationship. The following are their initial recommendations to each other. We hope these recommendations are useful to the decision-makers and their advisors on the bilateral relationship in Beijing and Washington, D.C.

Yawei Liu, Senior Advisor on China, The Carter Center

Click to read the report.