Dear President-Elect Harris: Let's talk about China

A hopeful, open letter on China to the next president — hopefully!

What follows is a letter to President-Elect Kamala Harris about re-imagining China policy. It is, I will freely own, wildly optimistic and hopeful: Yes, I know the election is still nearly a hundred days away and that many things could still happen. And I know that many of you will see in the substance of the letter ideas that are far more pie-in-the-sky than the electoral victory for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz on which it’s premised: at least the odds of that are closer to 50-50. I’m fully aware that few, if any, of the ideas I’ve put forward here have odds nearly so good. But indulge me: I put a lot of thought into this, and I believe there are valuable suggestions here that, at the very least, might start a conversation. So here goes:

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Listen to my narration of the letter’s intro & outro sans policy proposals in the player above.

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Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Dear Vice President (and President-Elect) Harris,

Congratulations on your historic election as President of the United States. As you and the Vice President-Elect Governor Walz prepare to assume this monumental responsibility, I offer some recommendations for how we might find a way forward in our relationship with China — a relationship both fraught and utterly consequential. You have a rare opportunity to recast the relationship, to reject what too many have assumed to be a baked-in bipartisan consensus in Washington and to chart a new path with China for the good of not just Americans and Chinese, but of all of humanity and the planet we call home.

I have no obvious qualifications to write you with such a long litany of policy prescriptions: I’ve never held public office, never served as a foreign service officer, and never worked in a DC think tank. But for many years now, my day-to-day work as the host of the leading English-language podcast on current affairs in China has involved speaking in depth with people who inarguably do possess such qualifications, and whose knowledge of China and the U.S.-China bilateral relationship is profound. My ideas draw extensively, though not exclusively, on theirs.

So often in recent years, I’ve been in rooms with dozens of people who are deeply knowledgeable on China: academics, analysts, former senior U.S. intelligence officers, national security experts, and former diplomats. While they may not always be in perfect accord when it comes to China policy, what strikes me is the enormous distance between, on the one hand, the shared assumptions, diagnoses, and prescriptions among these veteran China watchers and, on the other, the reigning view in Washington. This massive disconnect is something that China specialists are all aware of, and routinely lament. It’s night and day.

China, with its meteoric rise as a near-peer competitor, has become a lodestone for American foreign policy, often eliciting emotional responses that cloud our judgment and narrow our options. Your history-making presidency provides us with an ideal time for some national soul-searching when it comes to our attitudes toward China. What is it about China's ascent that seems to provoke such visceral reactions in Americans? Any honest answer must recognize that part of it lies in the challenges China poses to our long-held notion of American exceptionalism — our largely unexamined belief that we are inherently deserving of global primacy. I understand that questioning this axiomatic assumption —  however problematic we know it to be, and irrespective of the ways that shifting structural forces demand a sober reassessment of that belief — would be politically fraught: that it could call your very patriotism into question. I submit that this only proves how dangerously deep the roots of that pathology have sunk into our body politic.

But I believe that by offering, in its place, the promise of moral renewal — by stating plainly that we must renew ourselves, and that we can find more enduring strength in humility, self-awareness, and a genuine commitment to being a better global actor than we ever could in the jingoistic chest-thumping of your opponent — you can chart a course that is politically viable, morally sound, and historically vital. This is possible only because of the institutional foundations this country possesses: our freedom of expression, our openness, and our capacity for re-invention. 

As we contemplate our relationship with China, two fundamental questions demand our attention: "What does China want?" and "What does the United States really want from China?" In answering the former, we must resist the temptation to cherry-pick from the most extreme statements of Chinese ambition. A broader, better-informed, and more dispassionate view of Chinese foreign policy would reveal that China, like other nations, reacts to changing circumstances with ad hoc, often improvised decisions rather than following some grand plan for global domination, aimed at supplanting the U.S. as the new global hegemon. Does this mean that none of China’s behavior, either domestically or internationally, runs counter to American interests or values? Of course not. But we do ourselves no favors by assuming that everything China does is in the service of a master plan. To believe this — to see in Beijing’s every move the unfolding of some century-old grand scheme — is not only risibly orientalist but a wild overestimation of our counterpart.

Answering the other question — what do we want from China? — requires a level of candor that we, as Americans, are unused to. A truthful, unvarnished answer might be that we are fine with an increasingly prosperous China — but only so long as its prosperity and the technologies that power it remain comfortably far back from ours, and China plays by the rules we wrote without ever challenging our final authority. We must ask ourselves whether, were the roles reversed, we would find our own demands tolerable. I think we know the answer to that.

This introspection does not imply that the U.S. must accept notions like "spheres of influence" or fully cede global leadership to China or any other power. It does not mean that we should stifle criticism of China, and it certainly does not mean that we should cease to provide badly needed public goods in the world — including providing the regional security so prized by many nations of East and Southeast Asia. The United States can and should continue to work as a steward of the global commons, but recognize that there is both room and, increasingly, need to share that privilege and that burden. But we must lead by example, holding ourselves to ethical standards as high as those against which we often measure other governments, opening our ears to the increasingly loud criticism to which the U.S. is now subjected, especially in the Global South. We must strive to become a nation truly deserving of leadership and moral authority in the world. The road to that begins with a candid, humble admission of our failures and a willingness to do better. And that kind of moral tone-setting can only come from the White House.

The challenge before us is to find a way to coexist with a major power that, for deep-rooted historical reasons, does not share values that we believe — rightly or wrongly — to be universal. This task requires real empathy, but it most emphatically does not require us to abandon core American principles. It requires a rejection of zero-sum thinking. If China’s every gain is an intolerable loss for the U.S., it becomes impossible to contemplate making room for China's legitimate aspirations — just as China will, like us, have to make room for other rising powers in the world. Accommodation is not appeasement; rather, it is the essence of diplomacy and statecraft.

Driving so much of this tendency toward zero-sum thinking both in Washington and in Beijing is securitization: the process by which a widening range of issues are seen through the lens of national security, rationalizing the use of extraordinary measures. As the purview of national security expands in one country, it seems inevitably to trigger reciprocal expansion of the umbrella of security in the other. Already we’ve seen the pernicious effects of this, as more and more technologies are viewed as “dual use,” suspicion falls unfairly on NGOs in China or STEM students from China in the United States, and the flow of goods, data, know-how, and people is choked off to the detriment of both societies. Your presidency represents an opportunity to turn back the tide of securitization before it fundamentally alters the political culture of this nation.

I urge you to resist the notion that engagement with China has "failed." This narrative often relies on a straw man version of engagement's goals, such as the unrealistic expectation that China would transform into a liberal democracy in our image within a single generation. Even if we do provisionally accept that engagement aimed to make China “more like us” — more tolerant, open, participatory, and deliberative — then by that measure, engagement had been quite successful, and the fruits of engagement judged by those goals were most conspicuous in the areas of China where interactions with Americans and other Westerners have been most intense. These regions have seen notable shifts in social norms, economic practices, and even governance structures, albeit not always in ways immediately recognizable through a Western lens. To declare engagement a failure is to ignore these significant changes and to misunderstand the long-term nature of such transformative processes.

It's crucial to recognize that engagement is not a strategy we employ with like-minded nations or allies; rather, it's an approach specifically designed for countries with whom we have significant differences in values and worldviews. In the last decade, it’s clear and unfortunate that our values and worldviews have diverged more than they’ve converged, but it was rash and feckless to decide that what we then needed was less and not more engagement.

I also caution against preserving the Manichean framing under which your predecessor rigidly divided the world into democratic and authoritarian states. This binary perspective, surely a manifestation of the universalistic ethical absolutism at the heart of American exceptionalism, fails to capture the complex realities of global governance and risks alienating nations that do not wish to be forced into choosing sides between the U.S. and China. Most of the world does not see international relations through this simplistic lens, and insisting on such a framework may undermine our ability to build the broad coalitions necessary to address global challenges.

Instead, I urge your administration to embrace a multi-faceted approach to U.S.-China relations that recognizes both our differences and our shared interests. This approach should be rooted in a deep understanding of China's historical context, current aspirations, and the complex interplay between its domestic and foreign policies. By rejecting zero-sum thinking and embracing a more holistic view of engagement, we can create opportunities for cooperation while still standing firm on our core values and interests.

We must neither underreact to genuine threats — as from Putin’s revanchist Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of a sovereign neighbor on February 24, 2022, and poses an unequivocal threat to the peace and stability of Europe — nor overreact to potential, latent, or imagined threats. Overreaction, including excessively strident rhetoric, increases the likelihood of turning as-yet-unrealized threats into actual, deadly crises.

I know that accepting the bipartisan consensus on China as an immutable reality may seem like the path of least resistance. But it is a consensus built on badly flawed assumptions that are not shared by the best-informed American scholars and analysts. It has taken hold not because “tough on China” is wise policy, but because it is politically expedient, useful in selling policies from infrastructure to the restoration of American manufacturing, simple, and emotionally satisfying. But have these policies made us more secure? Have they led to meaningful job creation? Have they successfully stymied China’s technological advance — or simply lit a fire in China and given scientists, technologists, firms, research institutes, and government agencies a renewed sense of purpose and urgency, accelerating China’s technological independence? Have threats of even greater export controls deterred China from trading with Russia? Have our mostly unfounded suspicions of ethnically Chinese researchers in the U.S. helped us in our competition for talent? 

A Harris-Walz administration could continue with the failed China policies of the last two administrations — policies that have only increased the odds of conflict, repelled many nations of the Global South, harmed some of our most strategically critical companies by cutting them off from one of their biggest markets, strengthened Chinese resolve, and taken us further and further from our most cherished principles. Or your administration can lean into those principles, the principles that your campaign celebrated, that our party stands for, and that truly made America great: Openness, tolerance, and respect for a diversity of views. America has always drawn great strength from its ability to attract the best and the brightest from all over the world to our great universities, our companies, our cities and towns — people like your parents, and mine. An American revival under a Harris-Walz administration would double down on those great strengths.

With these principles in mind, I humbly offer the following recommendations, drawing many of these ideas from individuals I’ve worked with and interviewed — women and men whose knowledge, moral grounding, patriotism, and dedication to preserving peace and improving the bilateral relationship I profoundly admire:

Diplomatic Engagement and Communication:

Revive and Expand Multilevel Engagement: I urge you to consider reinstating an updated version of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) that existed during the Obama administration. Rather than focus on annual in-person spectacles held in Beijing and Washington — costly, difficult to coordinate, and time-consuming — a reimagined comprehensive framework should include regular, smaller meetings between American and Chinese officials at multiple levels and across a wide range of sectors, conducted in low-key quarterly meetings either online or in person, with the aim of fostering continuous communication and problem-solving. The new dialogue should be structured to address both immediate concerns and long-term strategic issues, providing a stable platform for managing differences and identifying areas of cooperation.

Strengthen Crisis Communication Mechanisms: Enhance the existing direct lines of communication between top leadership in both countries with multiple channels between corresponding civilian and military leaders across the Pacific. This mechanism should be designed to prevent misunderstandings during crises and facilitate rapid de-escalation of potential conflicts. Regular testing and updating of this system should be mandated to ensure its reliability in times of need.

Dial Down Provocative Rhetoric: Commit to ending gratuitous moralizing and confrontational language in official communications coming from the Executive Branch. Just as we rightly criticized China's "wolf warrior diplomacy," American national security and State Department officials, including ambassadors, should refrain from similar baiting and name-calling. Adopt a more measured, diplomatic tone that allows for frank discussions without unnecessary escalation. This approach should be institutionalized across all levels of government communication.

Promote Track II Diplomacy: Actively support and facilitate unofficial dialogues between and among academics, former officials, and civil society leaders from both countries. These forums can serve as testing grounds for new ideas and approaches, helping to build mutual understanding and generate creative solutions to complex issues. We should ensure diverse participation to reflect a range of perspectives from both societies. And we should support organizations with experience and expertise in organizing Track II dialogues, and expand the range of dialogues to include the right mix of specialists in highly technical areas with national security implications, especially Artificial Intelligence.

Reinvigorate People-to-People Exchanges: Vice President-Elect Walz knows better than anyone the value of people-to-people exchange, of contact between China and the United States. A little over a year after Tiananmen, in 1990, he returned from a year teaching in Foshan, Guangdong province and said of the Chinese people that with the right leadership, “There are no limits to what they could accomplish. They are such kind, generous, capable people. They just gave and gave and gave to me." Under your presidency, the U.S. should dramatically expand cultural, educational, and professional exchange programs between the two nations. This should include increased funding for language learning, study abroad opportunities, and collaborative research projects. By fostering personal connections and mutual understanding at the grassroots level, we can build a more resilient foundation for the bilateral relationship, and begin training a new cohort of specialists — people with a sense of the stakes and personal skin in the game on both sides.

Promote Subnational Cooperation: Your home state of California maintained important channels of cooperation on climate and the environment during Governor Brown’s and Governor Newsom’s tenures, despite the discouraging downturn in state-to-state relations. Continue to encourage and facilitate direct cooperation between U.S. states and Chinese provinces or cities. This could involve partnerships on issues not just like climate change mitigation, but also trade promotion and cultural exchange. Subnational ties can build grassroots support for the broader relationship, add additional ballast to help right the ship in heavy weather, and create new channels for practical cooperation.

Taiwan Policy:

Affirm the One China Policy: The U.S. can and should continue to maintain robust, unofficial relations with Taiwan, but we must also honor the commitment we made in the Three Communiques and affirm the One China Policy without equivocation. We should encourage peaceful cross-strait dialogue and oppose unilateral changes to the status quo by either side. The U.S. should continue to provide defensive arms to Taiwan under the terms of the Taiwan Relations Act, ensuring Taiwan can maintain sufficient self-defense capability. Message discipline is of paramount importance: gaffs, loose talk, and political grandstanding risk the lives of millions in the admirable democratic society that we seek, in our policy, to preserve.

Reaffirm Strategic Ambiguity: Maintain the longstanding U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity regarding Taiwan while clearly communicating our commitment to peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues. We must avoid provocative statements or actions coming from the Executive Branch that could be perceived as altering the status quo. Emphasize that any change in Taiwan's status must be achieved through peaceful means and with the consent of the people on both sides of the strait.

Encourage Cross-Strait Dialogue: Actively promote and facilitate dialogue between Taiwan and mainland China. Support confidence-building measures and economic cooperation that can reduce tensions and build trust. Encourage the resumption of official talks between Taipei and Beijing, offering to play a constructive role as a facilitator, or to call on regional partners to do so, if requested by both parties.

Enhance Taiwan's International Space: Work with allies and partners to support Taiwan's meaningful participation in international organizations and forums, particularly in areas such as global health, climate change, and technology standards, where statehood is not a requirement. This approach should be pursued in a way that does not unnecessarily antagonize Beijing but recognizes Taiwan's valuable contributions to the international community.

Technology Policy:

Refine and Rethink Export Controls: Your administration must take a sober look at the efficacy and the rationale of the current regime of technology export controls first announced on October 7, 2022. They should be assessed with fresh eyes to ensure they are narrowly targeted at specific national security concerns rather than broadly hindering technological cooperation. Establish a regular review process that involves input from industry, academia, and national security experts to keep these controls relevant and proportionate to demonstrable threats — not to latent, hypothetical threats. We must abandon the failed doctrine of preemption. We need to provide clear off-ramps for the U.S. with realizable goals and conditions sufficient, if met by Beijing, to be able to end controls. We need to communicate those conditions clearly and in good faith.

Promote Collaborative Innovation: Establish (or enhance existing) bilateral and multilateral frameworks for cooperation in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biotechnology. These frameworks should focus on developing shared ethical standards while recognizing differences in ethical norms, on safety protocols, and mutually beneficial research initiatives. The administration should proactively identify non-sensitive areas of technology and encourage joint ventures and research partnerships in those areas to maintain technological engagement and begin rebuilding trust.

Reevaluate Tariff Policies on Green Tech: Conduct a sweeping review of existing tariffs on Chinese goods, particularly those that impact climate change mitigation efforts such as photovoltaics, electric vehicles, and lithium-ion batteries. Develop a phased approach to reducing these tariffs at least to levels that reflect market-distorting government subsidies in the manner that the EU has approached tariffs. This should be part of a broader strategy to realign trade policies with decarbonization and economic goals.

Collaborate on AI Governance: The world has two AI superpowers — the United States and China. Your administration should redouble existing efforts to establish international norms and standards for the development and deployment of artificial intelligence. Engage China as a key partner in this process, recognizing its significant role in AI advancement. Focus on areas of common interest such as AI safety, ethics, and the prevention of harmful applications while respecting differences in approach.

Emerging Technologies and Ethics: 

Create a Technology Ethics Commission: Technologies beyond AI raise important ethical questions and concerns that urgently need to be addressed, from genetic engineering to equitable access to breakthrough health technologies to transformative new materials. Your administration could create a multilateral commission with places of prominence given to U.S. and Chinese firms and research institutions aimed at addressing ethical issues arising from emerging technologies. This body could develop shared guidelines for technologies from facial recognition to nanorobotics to autonomous autonomous weapons systems. We can help to ensure that these guidelines respect human rights, privacy, and democratic values while acknowledging different cultural and political contexts.

Establish a Cyber Stability Working Group: Cybersecurity cooperation between China and the U.S. has been stop and go, with no formal, long-running groups enjoying buy-in from both sides. Your administration could form a new joint working group to address cybersecurity concerns and establish norms for responsible state behavior in cyberspace. This could include developing shared protocols for addressing cyber threats, cooperating on cybercrime investigations, and creating mechanisms for de-escalation during cyber incidents. Work towards a bilateral agreement on refraining from cyber attacks on critical infrastructure.

Russia and Global Security:

Offer Constructive Engagement with China on Russia: Develop an approach to China's problematic relationship with Russia that goes beyond threats and sanctions. Offer concrete incentives for Beijing to play a constructive role in ending Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine beyond our current all-stick, no-carrot approach. One suggestion: offer some relief on current export controls by shrinking the “fence” in the “small yard, high fence” approach the Biden administration has used with technology exports to China. We must cease to be reflexively dismissive of China’s efforts to play a role in diplomacy, whether with respect to Ukraine or the Middle East.

Create Trilateral Dialogues: The negotiation to free the journalist Evan Gershkovich shows that despite Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine, negotiation with Russia is still possible. The Harris-Walz administration should work to establish regular trilateral dialogues among the U.S., China, and Russia on key security issues. These forums should focus on areas of mutual concern such as strategic stability, crisis management, and regional security. By engaging both powers simultaneously, we can work to reduce tensions and build trust among major global actors.

Promote Regional Security Frameworks: Encourage China's constructive participation in regional security arrangements, particularly in Asia. Freezing China out only encourages Beijing to work more closely with Moscow, and ultimately works against American security concerns in the region. One approach could be to support China's role in existing frameworks like the East Asia Summit or develop new multilateral security dialogues that include both China and U.S. allies. The goal should be to create inclusive security architectures that reduce the risk of conflict and promote stability.

Human Rights

Adopt a Results-Focused Human Rights Approach: While continuing to advocate passionately for human rights, shift from public confrontation to more targeted diplomacy on sensitive issues such as Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong. While the White House cannot dictate what rights-focused NGOs or Congress says, it can adopt a results-based approach that takes the efficacy of policy as the measure of success and refrains from indulging our craving for what President Obama called “the satisfying purity of indignation.” Emphasize universal standards only when we are confident in our record of meeting them, strive without reflexive defensiveness to live up to the principles we espouse, and refrain from dismissing all allegations of hypocrisy as mere “whataboutism.”

Selectively Support Civil Society Engagement: Increase funding and support for programs that engage Chinese civil society organizations in areas such as environmental protection, public health, and social welfare. These collaborations can help build grassroots support for improved governance and rights protections while avoiding direct confrontation with the Chinese government. 

Environmental Cooperation:

Empower the Working Group on Enhancing Climate Action: U.S.-China cooperation in the lead-up to the Paris Agreement exemplified how working together the world’s two largest economies and largest carbon emitters can make a significant impact. The administration should work to align carbon reduction goals. It should encourage the Working Group on Enhancing Climate Action to meet regularly to coordinate policies, share technologies, and develop joint initiatives in areas such as renewable energy, carbon capture, and sustainable urban development. There could be no clearer demonstration of the priority given to addressing climate change than working with China despite our differences: We can lower the temperature with China and work with them to lower the global temperature.

Launch Joint Clean Energy Projects: Initiate large-scale, bilateral clean energy projects in the Global South that demonstrate the potential for U.S.-China cooperation. These could include joint development of advanced nuclear technologies, collaborative research on energy storage solutions, co-investment in green hydrogen production, or just large-scale offshore wind or solar projects. Such projects would serve as tangible examples of how cooperation can drive innovation and economic growth.

Coordinate Global Climate Leadership and Financing: Work with China to align our approaches to global climate negotiations and the massive shortfall in climate financing. This could involve joint bilateral commitments to increase climate finance for developing countries, coordinated pushes for more ambitious global emissions targets, and shared efforts to support green technology transfer. By presenting a united front, the world's two largest economies can accelerate global climate action.

Prioritize the Energy Transition: Tariffs of 100% on battery electric vehicles, restrictions on imports of Chinese-made lithium batteries, the doubling of Section 301 tariffs from 25% to 50% on Chinese photovoltaics, and the ending of the carve-out for bifacial solar panels were all policies intended to boost domestic U.S. manufacturing and speed up the energy transition, but the effect has been to slow America’s installation of solar and its adoption of electric vehicles. If your administration believes in the urgency of addressing climate change, we need to end these harmful tariffs and find ways to support the manufacture of domestic renewable energy and electric vehicles, rather than hurting the domestic industry as the current slate of policies has. 

Energy Security and Resource Management:

Promote an Energy Security Dialogue: Initiate a strategic dialogue on energy security, either as part of a broader set of intergovernmental dialogues or stand-alone, focusing on stabilizing global energy markets, promoting clean energy transitions, and ensuring reliable energy supplies for both countries. This should include discussions on reducing dependence on fossil fuels, managing the geopolitical implications of energy transitions, and cooperating on energy innovation.

Enhance Ocean Conservation Efforts: Ocean temperature rises, dangerous acidification, overfishing, microplastics, and many other threats to our oceans require collaborative efforts. These are among our most precious commons. Your administration could develop joint initiatives for ocean conservation and sustainable use of marine resources. This could include collaborative research on marine ecosystems, joint efforts to combat illegal fishing, and coordinated approaches to managing international waters. Focus on developing and implementing new technologies for ocean cleanup, sustainable aquaculture, and monitoring of marine biodiversity.

Establish a Joint Commission on Sustainable Urban Development: Create a bilateral commission focused on developing and implementing best practices for sustainable urban development. This could include collaborations on smart city technologies, green building standards, urban transportation systems, and waste management solutions. Such cooperation could not only benefit both countries but also provide models for sustainable urbanization globally.

Space Exploration and Scientific Cooperation:

Repeal the Wolf Amendment: Work with Congress to repeal or significantly modify the Wolf Amendment, which restricts NASA's ability to cooperate with China on space exploration. Replace it with a more nuanced policy that allows for collaboration on specific, mutually beneficial projects — cleaning up space debris, climate monitoring, and other issues of common concern — while maintaining necessary safeguards for sensitive technologies.

Initiate Joint Space Missions: In 1975, even as the U.S. and the Soviet Union were locked in a cold war, Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft docked in orbit, symbolizing the potential for cooperation. Once the Wolf Amendment is rescinded, the Harris-Walz administration should propose and develop ambitious joint space exploration missions with China, such as lunar or Mars research projects. These collaborations could leverage the strengths of both nations' space programs and serve as powerful symbols of cooperation. Ensure that such projects are designed to advance scientific knowledge and benefit humanity as a whole.

Expand Scientific Exchanges: The Harris administration should commit to pushing for the renewal of the U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement, which will come up for renewal this month but will likely require another renewal during your administration. The U.S. should significantly increase funding and support for scientific exchanges between U.S. and Chinese researchers across a wide range of fields. This should include joint research projects, conferences, and long-term fellowships and should focus on areas of mutual interest and global importance, such as pandemic prevention, clean energy technologies, and basic scientific research.

For more ways to enhance scientific cooperation with China, see the section below on Domestic U.S. Policies for Enhanced Competitiveness.

South China Sea and Maritime Issues:

Support a Code of Conduct: Actively encourage and support the finalization of a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea between China and ASEAN countries. The U.S. should offer technical assistance and diplomatic support to this process while respecting that the U.S. is not a direct claimant. Emphasize the importance of adhering to international law and ensuring freedom of navigation for all nations, and offer as an inducement a phased reduction in the frequency of FONOPs if China respects the Code of Conduct.

Promote Joint Resource Management: Encourage the development of joint resource management agreements in disputed areas of the South China Sea. These could include fisheries management plans, environmental protection initiatives, or shared hydrocarbon exploration projects. Such agreements can help reduce tensions by focusing on mutual benefits rather than competing claims.

Enhance Maritime Cooperation: Expand U.S.-China cooperation on non-traditional security issues in the maritime domain, such as anti-piracy operations, search and rescue, and marine environmental protection. These collaborative efforts can build trust and establish patterns of cooperation that may help manage more contentious issues in the future.

Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Global Development:

Seek Constructive Engagement with BRI: Rather than opposing China's Belt and Road Initiative outright, we can seek ways to constructively engage with and shape the initiative, and propose initiatives of our own meant to complement — not compete with or counter — China’s moves. This could include proposing joint infrastructure projects in third countries, offering to collaborate on setting high standards for project sustainability and transparency, or working together to address the debt challenges faced by some BRI recipient countries.

Coordinate Development Efforts: Establish a regular dialogue mechanism to coordinate U.S. and Chinese development efforts in regions such as Africa and Southeast Asia. This should aim to reduce redundancy, leverage complementary strengths, and ensure that development projects align with the needs and priorities of recipient countries. We could focus on areas where cooperation can yield significant benefits, such as healthcare infrastructure or sustainable agriculture.

Global Health and Humanitarian Cooperation:

Collaborate on Global Health Security: Establish a bilateral working group focused on pandemic preparedness and response. This should involve joint research initiatives, shared early warning systems, and coordinated approaches to global health crises. Restore to pre-2020 levels the U.S. CDC’s field offices in China. Push Congress to repeal the vindictive, counterproductive bans on collaboration with Chinese institutes like the Wuhan Institute of Virology and work with, rather than browbeat, Chinese actors to improve transparency and rapid information sharing in future health emergencies. Given the global impact of COVID-19, cooperation in this area could yield significant benefits and help rebuild trust. 

Cooperate on Food Security: With parts of the Horn of Africa, Sudan, and South Sudan now teetering on the brink of famine, and with food security further threatened by the Russian war on Ukraine, it is urgent that the U.S. and China establish joint initiatives to address global food security challenges. This could include collaborative research on sustainable agriculture, coordinated efforts to stabilize global food markets, and joint projects to improve agricultural productivity in developing countries. Focus on innovative technologies such as vertical farming, drought-resistant crops, and precision agriculture that can benefit both nations and the wider world.

Collaborate on Disaster Response: Establish mechanisms for joint disaster response and humanitarian assistance operations. This could include shared training exercises, coordinated deployment of resources during crises, and joint development of disaster response technologies. Such cooperation can demonstrate the positive impact of U.S.-China collaboration on a global scale and build goodwill between the two nations.

Deepen Efforts to Address Fentanyl and Drug Trafficking: Enhance cooperation on combating the illegal drug trade, focusing on cracking down on precursor chemicals used in the manufacture of fentanyl. This should involve joint law enforcement operations, improved information sharing, and collaborative efforts to address the root causes of drug abuse. Work together to strengthen international controls on precursor chemicals and improve drug addiction treatment and prevention programs in both countries.

Domestic U.S. Policies for Enhanced Competitiveness:

Invest in Education and Workforce Development: American efforts to compete with China, as many have said, should always be about running faster, and not trying to trip the other guy. Not only have our efforts to “trip the other guy” not borne fruit, but they have harmed the U.S. by cutting off a major export market and stemmed the flow of technical talent from China. We should instead be focused on improving our own endurance through building long-term talent pipelines by significantly increasing federal funding for STEM education at all levels, from primary school through post-graduate research, and by implementing policies to attract and retain global talent, including reforming and simplifying H1-B visa processes and other immigration programs that bring highly skilled workers and international students.

Boost Research and Development: The Chinese state and leading Chinese companies continue to invest in R&D in basic science and applied research. Like it or not, we are forced to play that same game. We should be incentivizing private sector companies to plow more of their profits into R&D across a range of critical technologies and forge new public-private partnerships to accelerate innovation in areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biotechnology. These efforts should aim to foster open innovation and international collaboration where appropriate, rather than a closed, nationalistic approach.

Modernize Infrastructure: Continue to build on the great work already begun in the Biden-Harris administration to modernize American infrastructure. China is vastly ahead of the U.S. in its 5G networks: it boasted nearly 3 million 5G base stations in 2023 compared to 356,000 in the EU and only 100,000 in the U.S. Grim as that is, the situation in high-speed rail is worse still, and we lag China in deployed renewable (270 gigawatts in the U.S. compared to 2,920 gw in China ) and smart city technologies. These investments should be designed not only to improve American competitiveness but also to create opportunities for American workers, foster international cooperation, and buttress America’s role in standard-setting.

Reform the (former) "China Initiative": Overhaul or, better still, eliminate the remnants of the China Initiative, the Department of Justice's approach to countering economic espionage and intellectual property theft. Replace the country-of-origin-based profiling inherent in the Trump administration’s "China Initiative" with a country-agnostic, behavior-based approach that protects national security interests without unfairly targeting Chinese Americans or other ethnic Chinese researchers, or hindering legitimate scientific collaboration.

Enhance Domestic Resilience: Develop policies to strengthen American economic and social resilience, focusing on issues such as income inequality, healthcare access, and community cohesion. We must recognize that our ability to engage confidently and with credibility with China on the global stage is intrinsically linked to the strength and unity of our domestic society. Implement programs to support communities and industries adversely affected by economic changes, including those related to trade with China.

I fully understand that this is a long list that is short on detail and that the exigencies of electoral politics will render not just individual policy recommendations but, more importantly, the kind of fundamental rethink I urge in the introduction next to impossible. Even among the lower-hanging items, I know that you would still need to pick your battles and that there are other pressing crises that will demand your time and attention. But I urge you at least to recognize that it is possible for your administration to forge a more stable, productive, and mutually beneficial relationship with China. If you adopt an approach that recognizes the complexities of our interconnected world and seeks to navigate them with the wisdom, foresight, and commitment to shared prosperity and security that I know you and your team possess, you will already have done well. I know that many talented and deeply-informed scholars, analysts, and diplomats stand ready to assist in further refining, developing, and implementing these policies, always with an eye toward building a better future for both our nations and the world at large.

Once again, along with several tens of millions of American voters and, doubtless, billions of people around the world who are as thrilled and relieved as I am, I congratulate you on this historic victory. 

Sincerely,

Kaiser Kuo