Ask the Experts: How to Stabilize U.S.-China Relations

In March 2023, during a particularly fraught period in U.S.-China relations, Corporation grantees offered perspectives on how to move toward bilateral stability

By Stephen J. Del RossoMarch 7, 2023

Carnegie Reporter Fall 2023 Emerging Global Order

A woman in Beijing on August 4, 2022, uses her mobile phone as she walks by a large screen showing a news broadcast about China’s military exercises encircling Taiwan after a visit to the island by Nancy Pelosi, then speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. (Credit: Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images).

Carnegie Corporation of New York’s current grantmaking on China, which began nearly 20 years ago, has its roots in the early decades of the last century. In 1913, the Corporation made a grant of $200,000 (equivalent to about $6 million in 2023) to what became known as the Chinese Educational Commission, supporting Chinese students studying at U.S. colleges and universities. Today, our grantmaking focuses on fostering a new generation of China experts, supporting policy-relevant scholarly research to better understand China, and promoting Track II dialogue between Chinese experts and officials and their counterparts in the United States and the Asia-Pacific region.

Growing Sino-American tensions over the war in Ukraine, the uncertain fate of Taiwan, disputes in the South China Sea, and economic decoupling, among other challenges, threaten to have enormous consequences for global peace and security. In March 2023, inspired by the abiding commitment of our founder, Andrew Carnegie, to conflict prevention, we invited grantees to respond (in approximately 100 words or fewer) to the question: What single step could the United States and China individually take to help stabilize their bilateral relationship?

The following experts suggest that there are actions on each side that could help lower the temperature in this increasingly adversarial relationship.

Jude Blanchette

Freeman Chair in China Studies, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken should give a major speech clearly and convincingly upholding the United States’ long-standing One-China policy. Chinese leader Xi Jinping should reciprocate with a speech or major article that clearly articulates that Beijing sees the path to “reunification” as a long-term one, and one that will only travel the road of peace and persuasion. Both countries must then follow up with actions that match their statements.

Keisha Brown

Associate Professor, Tennessee State University; Cofounder and Co-CEO, Black China Caucus | @DocKBrown85

Within the complicated landscape of U.S.-China bilateral relations, one potential step that both sides can take is to reinvigorate people-to-people relations. The benefits of such a policy lie in its simplicity, in light of how the chasm of understanding between these nations and peoples has widened in recent years. The ability to foster relationships that will facilitate understanding, cooperation, and collaboration at the individual level is a cornerstone that needs to be encouraged in order to help usher in a new era of U.S.-China relations that both reengages experts in the field and inspires those entering the space.

Robert Daly

Director, Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, The Wilson Center

China should strike from its domestic and global pronouncements the claim that all friction in bilateral relations is the fault of the United States. It should accept that competition will characterize Sino-U.S. relations for decades to come. Reality-based dialogue may then be possible. The U.S. should articulate a new One-China policy — one it truly believes in — and then abide by it. The new formulation must include opposition to Taiwan’s independence and China’s use of force and must reject the idea that Taiwan is an American asset. American leaders who stray from the new formulation should be reprimanded.

M. Taylor Fravel

Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director, Security Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology | @fravel

As the world’s largest economies, with the largest defense budgets and armed with nuclear weapons, the United States and China must find a modus vivendi in their relationship. One approach would be for each country to identify what they view as the other’s legitimate interests and thus set the terms of coexistence. Doing so would be politically fraught for leaders in both capitals, but even if only in private and unofficially, such an agreement can shape the scope, intensity, and — in some cases — limits of competition between the two.

Paul Haenle

Maurice R. Greenberg Director’s Chair, Carnegie China, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | @paulhaenle

Among the many challenges of the U.S.-China relationship, perhaps the most pressing is the lack of high-level and robust communication channels, including military-to-military dialogues. To stabilize the bilateral relationship, China and the United States should make efforts to establish and sustain high-level communication channels and to develop over time a set of principles and operating mechanisms to better manage the U.S.-China relationship despite the growing list of differences. The alternative to managing competition would be greater confrontation or, worse yet, conflict that neither country wants.

Bonny Lin

Director, China Power Project, and Senior Fellow, Asian Security, Center for Strategic and International Studies

The relationship between the United States and China is dominated by competition and distrust — each views the other’s ambitions and activities as aimed at undermining its own position and interests. Domestic factors incentivize leaders to adopt tougher positions than to find common ground. Within this current context, there is no single step that both sides can embrace that is politically feasible and can substantially improve or “stabilize” the relationship from tensions. Instead, to slow the rapid deterioration of relations, both countries should maintain as much connectivity as possible, including diplomatic and military engagements and trade, and increase people-to-people exchanges.

Nadège Rolland

Distinguished Fellow, China Studies, The National Bureau of Asian Research | @RollandNadege

The antagonism between the United States and China runs too deep for their relationship to be fixed by any simple unilateral gesture. Like its predecessors, the current Chinese political leadership continues to believe that the U.S. is a hostile power that wants to thwart China’s rise, constrain its strategic space, and terminate the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. The best both countries could do is to try to reduce the risk of accidental confrontation at sea, as well as in the air, space, outer space, and cyber domains. This could only work if both sides were equally serious in their willingness to negotiate.

Orville Schell

Arthur Ross Director, Center on U.S.-China Relations, Asia Society | @orvilleschell

We are at a dangerous inflection point. With “engagement” rendered dysfunctional as an operating system, U.S.-China relations have been left hurtling toward an ever more dangerous precipice. President Biden should call up Xi Jinping and propose that each appoint three trusted former officials or policy experts, have them meet in Singapore, come up with a list of possible off-ramps or policy proscriptions, and then submit them to the two leaders for their consideration. Then Biden and Xi would meet themselves to consider how these policy suggestions might serve to put U.S.-China relations on a different and more stable basis.

Susan Shirk

Research Professor and Founding Chair, 21st Century China Center, UC San Diego | @SusanShirk1

Competition between the U.S. and China should become a race to the top: investing more and achieving more without closing doors to collaboration. The secret of American success has always been its openness. Openness ensures a flow of global talents into the country and, combined with some narrowly targeted measures to manage the risks of openness, it offers the best way to compete with China. The exclusionary approaches currently favored in the U.S. will do lasting damage to American society, higher education, and the economy. The U.S. is competing with China by becoming more like China — nationalist, fixated on security, and politicizing the market economy — instead of becoming a better version of itself.

Yun Sun

Senior Fellow and Codirector, East Asia Program, and Director, China Program, The Stimson Center | @Stimson_EAsia

Between the U.S. and China, domestic politics has become a critical factor driving foreign policy, and usually not in a positive way. It forces both governments to adopt policies knowing the undesired consequences. The single step U.S. and China could take to stabilize relations at these moments is to also consider and adopt positive actions to mitigate the damage. For example, if the speaker of the House must visit Taiwan, the U.S. could send a senior leader to China to convey goodwill. Similarly, if Xi must visit Moscow, he should consider direct engagement with Europe, and Ukraine, to neutralize the impact.

Susan Thornton

Director, Forum on Asia-Pacific Security, National Committee on American Foreign Policy | @suea_thornton

The U.S. and China should resume regular flights between the two countries as soon as possible, as well as smooth out obstacles to visa issuance. Let people travel and meet! Washington should also reschedule Secretary Blinken’s visit to Beijing.

Jessica Chen Weiss

Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies, Cornell University | @jessicacweiss

Given the interest of both governments in putting a floor under the relationship, the most important step would be a tacit agreement to limit actions that could trigger a crisis or sharp escalation, particularly around Taiwan but also in the South China Sea. In my view, the most effective guardrails against a near-term crisis would involve mutual reductions in the frequency of close-in operations that increase risk and aggravate tensions without meaningfully bolstering defense and deterrence, whether in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait. So long as both governments continue to take unilateral actions to defend and assert their interests without accompanying efforts to negotiate plausible bounds around competition and terms of coexistence, efforts to deter and deny the other side will only accelerate the action-reaction spiral, undercutting the assurances necessary to make deterrence work.

Stephen J. Del Rosso is senior program director of Carnegie Corporation of New York’s International Peace and Security program.