China, U.S. must meet challenges if relationship is going to improve
Secretary of State Antony Blinken met officials in China last week as disputes over wars, trade, technology and security are testing the two countries' efforts to stabilize the relationship.
President Joe Biden is facing pressure to confront China's authoritarian government and offer new protections for American businesses and workers from low-priced Chinese imports.
China is courting foreign investment to help its sluggish economy. At the same time, its leader, Xi Jinping, has been bolstering national security and expanding China's military footprint around Taiwan and the South China Sea in ways that have alarmed its neighbors.
Biden and Xi have held talks to prevent their countries' disputes from spiraling into conflict after relations sank to their lowest point in decades last year. But an array of challenges could make steadying the relationship difficult.
Territorial showdown
The United States has been pushing back against China's increasingly assertive claims over swaths of the South China Sea and the self-governed island of Taiwan by building security alliances in Asia.
That effort has prompted more concerns in Beijing that the U.S. is leading a campaign to encircle China and contain its rise.
This month, Biden met with the leaders of Japan and the Philippines. They discussed territorial conflicts in the South China Sea, including China's “repeated harassment of lawful Philippine operations,” the U.S. government said.
Encounters between Chinese and American military ships and planes in the Taiwan Strait and the South China and East China Seas have continued, raising concerns that an incident could trigger a confrontation between the two powers. That is why U.S. officials have insisted on maintaining close military communication. High-level contacts between the two armies were restored this year after China froze communication in response to former House speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in 2022.
China says the U.S. is stoking confrontation and should not interfere in the region's affairs.
Fentanyl
U.S. officials say China has played a concerning role in providing the chemicals and precursors that are used to make the powerful drug of fentanyl.
In a meeting in San Francisco in November, Biden and Xi resolved to cooperate on tracking and cutting down on those flows. U.S. officials say China has started making some progress on that account, but they're likely to urge further action.
In a report released last week, a House Congressional committee focused on China alleged that China had actively promoted the supply of fentanyl precursors to the United States, including by subsidizing exporters. A State Department official said that Chinese authorities had started taking action against Chinese synthetic drug and chemical precursor suppliers, but that the U.S. wanted to see progress.
Trade and tech
The United States and China still have one of the world's most extensive trading relationships, but it has grown even more contentious in recent months.
U.S. officials have urged China to scale back its exports of inexpensive electric vehicles and other green energy goods, saying they are a threat to American jobs. They are weighing whether to raise tariffs on Chinesemade cars and solar panels, in order to block more Chinese imports from the U.S..
The Biden administration also continues to add more restrictions on selling advanced chips and the machinery used to make them to China, out of concern that artificial intelligence could aid the Chinese military.
Beijing has opposed the restrictions, which Xi has said are an attempt to deny China's “legitimate right to development.”
Election interference
U.S. officials have expressed concerns that China may seek to influence the outcome of the upcoming U.S. presidential election, including by orchestrating social media campaigns to influence American public opinion.
The National Security Agency said last week that there were also more signs that China was trying to gain access to critical American infrastructure in order to threaten those systems in the event of a conflict. Last year, Microsoft said it discovered malicious code spread by Chinese government hackers embedded in telecommunications systems in Guam and elsewhere in the United States.
While Beijing has denied engaging in cyberattacks and election interference, recently leaked documents show China has developed a sophisticated network of state-sponsored hackers for hire that have targeted databases around the world.
Ukraine
U.S. officials say they see China's sale to Russia of chips, machine tools, drones and other materials that are used in the war in Ukraine as one of the biggest obstacles in the relationship.
And they believe that getting China to withdraw that support could determine the outcome of the war.
China has tried to walk a careful line of not providing Russia with “lethal support,” like weapons, while still supporting Moscow. In early April, Xi met with Russia's foreign minister and reaffirmed China's partnership with Russia.
Even as tensions between China and the United States have eased, Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin have remained closely aligned. The two leaders have sought to weaken Washington's global dominance, blaming “U.S. hegemony” for constraining their national ambitions.