With apologies to nostalgic cold war views about Russia, or unmet dreams of a united Europe with a single foreign policy, the world’s most important bilateral relationship is the one between the US and China. For that relationship to succeed, it must be embedded in a larger framework of US diplomacy in Asia, stretching from Japan to India, but certainly the US-China piece will be central for the 21st century. With new leadership in Beijing under President Xi Jinping settling in and President Barack Obama starting his second term, this is a defining period for the future of US-China relations. Both countries have challenging domestic agendas, but Washington and Beijing fully recognise the importance of their international interactions.
Currently, there’s probably more discussion about where and how the two countries should talk rather than what they will talk about. Indeed, there is general agreement along corridors of power in Washington that several critical issues – including North Korea, Iran, macroeconomic policy, market access, cyber issues, energy security and climate change – require high-level attention from both sides. Some of the most interesting decisions, however, are about the appropriate mechanisms for conducting dialogue on these very topics. Currently, the US and China have some of the most engaged and intricate diplomatic mechanisms of modern times.
At the strategic and economic dialogues in the first Obama administration, secretaries Hillary Clinton and Tim Geithner met with their Chinese counterparts yearly to discuss topics on a broad range of commercial, political, military and strategic significance. The US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade brings together key officials from the Department of Commerce and the other economic agencies, allowing for intense discussions on trade frictions and intellectual property rights cases. The Pentagon conducts its own dialogue through its various channels, including the defence consultative talks that facilitate strategic discussions about mutual perspectives in the security arena. These are simply a small sampling of the dozens of interactions that take place between the two governments at various levels. There have also been extensive meetings between the US and Chinese leaders at multilateral summits and state visits. All of these interactions should continue but some innovations in format and venue are in order.