US-China relations: both sides must see engagement as ‘moral imperative’, Hong Kong forum told

Speakers at an event discussing the relationship view recent developments as positive but warn that events such as Taiwan’s elections could strain ties
The forum hears that trust is ‘really low’ and that more efforts are needed to build bridges

US-China relations

Dewey Sim

Published: 9:00pm, 15 Dec 2023

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The United States and China should view engagement as a “moral imperative” and build greater trust as they seek to manage tensions, a forum in Hong Kong has heard.

While last month’s meeting between presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden was seen as positive, speakers at the event said relations could be tested by events such as next month’s Taiwanese elections.

John Thornton, chair emeritus of US think tank Brookings, said both Washington and Beijing needed to recognise their place in the world and increase the frequency of their communication.

“The world has changed. They’re the centre of the world and how the two governments interact has to materially change,” he said.

“At a time when you need absolutely the opposite, what’s going on? We’re getting less and less communication.”

Thornton was speaking as part of a fireside chat at an event organised by the University of Hong Kong’s Centre on Contemporary China and the World.

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The centre, set up last month, is a rare think tank in Hong Kong dedicated to US-China relations. Its founding director Li Cheng, a political scientist, told the conference that the city had a “genuine leverage to shape international discourse”.

In recent months both sides have been working to restore communications and mend ties after tensions soared following then US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last year and the shooting down of an alleged Chinese spy balloon early this year.

Top US officials have visited Beijing and, when the two presidents met in San Francisco last month, both sides pledged to resume military-to-military communications and establish talks on artificial intelligence.

Andrew Mertha, director of the China studies programme at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said engagement should be thought of in a “more instrumental way” that transcended domestic politics.

“But it – that is engagement – does remain a moral imperative,” he told a separate panel discussion.

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“Being pro-engagement is not a political or a policy specific label. On the contrary, it transcends partisanship and rejects ideology. It indicates one’s propensity toward working with more and better information rather than with less.”

Zheng Yongnian, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, noted that political trust between China and the US was “really low”, adding that “a level of trust is a must for the two countries [to] live peacefully together”.

He said Beijing had been working to build trust, citing comments by Xi saying that China did not seek to challenge or replace the US.

“I think, as part of civil society, we really need to have more communication and more exchanges between people and between local governments,” Zheng said.

Rick Waters, managing director of Eurasia Group’s China practice, pointed out that the US government had shifted its approach.

Previously, Washington used its network of channels with Beijing to move policies in a direction where there was greater cooperation or a “common purpose”.

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But now – with US-China ties becoming “competitive fundamentally” – the Biden administration’s approach has been to use bilateral channels to “manage competitive elements of the relationship” and stabilise it where they can.

While in theory the US and China should cooperate on transnational issues such as climate change, Waters said “politics on each side makes it quite difficult”.

“What you’ve seen now is a restoration of senior-level channels and a web of carefully tailored working groups. It’s a more modest structure” he said.

This structure, he added, was built around trying to avoid miscalculations, managing competition responsibly, and building the relationship in areas like climate change and food security.

Waters said he was “quite optimistic” that the outcomes reached by the two leaders in San Francisco would be “largely durable” but ties would likely again be tested by events such as Taiwan’s elections, heightened tech competition and the US elections.

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But he suggested that the current situation might be “about as good as you can get” at this stage of relations.

“There isn’t really an endgame. We have to consider that sometimes the long-term equilibrium can be one that’s unsatisfying to both sides,” he said.

“So it might be that we have to go through these periods of intense competition to reach a thaw or an equilibrium that is more realistic and honest.”