Secretary of State Antony Blinken is heading to China this weekend to discuss the dire state of the relationship between Washington and Beijing. President Biden has said he wants to usher in a “thaw” in the two countries’ relations, but the obstacles to détente remain huge. Competing security agendas are leading to confrontations at sea and in the air — including concerns about each side’s intelligence-gathering efforts. China’s brutal treatment of Uyghurs and Hong Kong democracy activists, as well as recent crackdowns on foreign investors, have left many members of the American political class deeply skeptical about the prospects for engagement. U.S. efforts to block Chinese access to sensitive technologies are angering Beijing. Indeed, relations have hit such a low that many informed observers doubt a thaw is even in the cards. We asked several experts to offer thoughts on how the two countries might defuse the tensions.

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Bates Gill is executive director of the Center for China Analysis at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

Last year, trade between the United States and China reached nearly $700 billion, a record high — a fact that undermines talk of a complete freeze in relations between the two countries. Moreover, both sides understand the downsides of fully pulling apart from one another.

The United States and the European Union have wisely discarded talk of “decoupling” from Beijing in favor of the term “de-risking.” Even so, China and the West will continue efforts to limit each other’s access to technologies, commodities and data deemed threatening to their national security interests.

Given those constraints, it makes sense for both sides to seek opportunities for cooperation in other realms. That could involve the promotion of joint research in tackling public health challenges such as cancer, finding common cause in mitigating climate change, jointly addressing development challenges in the Global South and reinvigorating people-to-people ties between the two countries.

Signaling a potential opening, the Biden administration says it would “welcome” China’s role in contributing to a “just and sustainable peace” in Ukraine. And with Xi Jinping expected to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco in November, the possibility of a Biden-Xi summit will drive the two sides to seek constructive outcomes.

But as positive as these warming trends might be, the prospects for a thaw face a cold, hard fact: Geopolitically, the United States and China deeply distrust one another. That is unlikely to change soon. U.S.-China relations will remain solidly in the deep freeze for the foreseeable future. Anyone who wants to alter that would be well-advised to begin by focusing on chances for modest progress.

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Nikki Haley, a Republican candidate for president, was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2017 to 2019 and governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017.

The story of the Biden administration’s approach to China has been weakness. The president has utterly failed in his dealings with China — militarily, economically and diplomatically. President Biden’s treasury secretary, Janet L. Yellen, recently called for deepening our economic ties with China. That’s insane.

China thinks the Blinken visit will be more of the same. It would be far better to show American strength and resolve. These are the questions that Antony Blinken should ask — and that Biden should’ve asked from the start.

1. Why is China preparing for war?

China’s military buildup is breathtaking. It’s building hypersonic weapons, nuclear missiles, cutting-edge warships and a host of other advanced technologies. Xi Jinping is dead-serious about winning a war. America should be just as serious and modernize our military. It’s the only way to keep the peace.

2. Why is China abusing our economy?

The Chinese Communist Party exploits American companies to strengthen its own military — in ways that range from harvesting data to stealing sensitive technologies. This has to stop. Protecting our economy is a matter of ensuring our national security.

3. Why is China infiltrating America?

4. Why is China infiltrating the Western Hemisphere?

It’s not just the spy base in Cuba. Beijing is trying to turn almost every country in the Western Hemisphere against us, often using economic bribery. We need to get Chinese influence out of our backyard.

5. Why shouldn’t the United States double down on supporting Taiwan?

Xi wants to destroy the island democracy. That would damage our economy and jeopardize our security. China should know that we’ll help Taiwan protect itself because it’s in our interest. For that matter, we need to tell China that we’ll continue to help Ukraine beat Russia, in a preview of what will happen with Taiwan.

China doesn’t want us to ask these questions. But it’s time to hold our enemy accountable. Every day we don’t puts America in greater danger.

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Antony Blinken’s meetings will not produce dramatic concessions. But both sides can at least demonstrate their willingness to move forward.

One major problem in the Sino-American relationship is how fraught economic issues have become — in part because they are so entangled with sensitive national security interests. Yet the secretary of state’s trip to China offers an excellent opportunity for the Biden administration to augment its economics-focused China Strategy — “invest, align, compete” — with a Chinese People Strategy. During his trip, Blinken needs to engage with the Chinese people, not just policymakers.

Blinken should try to add an informal note to his visit, perhaps by ordering a Chinese crepe (a classic working-class breakfast item) at a local breakfast stand and talking with the locals. This sort of personal gesture from U.S. dignitaries has almost always been well-received by Chinese people from all walks of life.

Shifting the focus of the relationship toward people-to-people exchange is crucial. In the trip’s wake, the Biden administration should expand on this approach by reviving the Fulbright China program, which was abruptly terminated by the Trump administration in 2020 over Beijing’s imposition of the national security law in Hong Kong. Since the normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979, the Fulbright China program had granted more than 3,500 American citizens academic opportunities in China and brought more than 1,500 Chinese scholars to the United States. The Biden administration can send a powerful signal by restoring one of America’s oldest connections to China.

Nations do not shake hands with each other, but people do. Despite current tensions, China and the United States remain interconnected on many levels. The two countries are vital to each other and to the world — even if they often prefer to forget that fact. It’s time to bring the human dimension back to their relations.

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Michael Mazza is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior nonresident fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute.

While Washington and Beijing might share some overlapping interests, their worldviews, visions for global order and broad national security approaches are fundamentally incompatible. That didn’t matter quite so much in the days when the power differential between the United States and China was much greater. But as that gap has narrowed, Beijing has proved increasingly prepared to threaten the U.S. homeland, the United States’ democratic system of government and the continuing prosperity of the American people.

President Biden has on four occasions intimated that he would defend Taiwan from attack. More broadly, he has worked to build a global coalition aimed at limiting and, yes, containing the expansion of China’s military, economic and diplomatic power. Neither side can provide meaningful reassurance that it does not intend to trample on the other’s most closely held interests because many of those interests are irreconcilable.

In a series of speeches over the past year, Xi Jinping has made clear that China wishes to shape a new world order in which autocracies can thrive. That is ultimately a far darker, far more violent and far less free world than that to which Americans have grown accustomed. Beijing and Washington might find ways to dampen tensions or reduce risks — both hope Antony Blinken’s upcoming visit will do so by initiating a return to regular senior-level diplomatic engagement — but a sustainable thaw is not in the cards. As long as China retains the intent and the capability to threaten America and the world America has made, bilateral relations will remain frosty.

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Andrew Browne is a partner in the Brunswick Group China Hub.

The situation that confronts the United States and China has little in common with the Cold War. The Soviet Union actually lagged behind the United States in many areas, but today, the United States and China compete vigorously across all domains — including economics and technology as well as security and politics. They are so evenly matched that this time around, there can be no winner, only losers. Correspondingly, the first sign of a real thaw will come when both countries recognize that neither can dominate the other.

Business has a major role to play in any détente. America and China conduct almost $2 billion in trade each day. A thaw would treat that fact as a reason for celebration, not alarm, by acknowledging that the vast majority of commercial exchanges support middle-class prosperity in both countries. (That does not exclude, of course, placing strict limits around technologies subject to trade restrictions on national security grounds.)

Ministerial-level visits are helpful, of course. But this geopolitical impasse cries out for bottom-up exchanges to restore some measure of trust. The No. 1 priority, surely, must be to resume a full schedule of commercial flights and pack the aircraft with a mix of entrepreneurs, students, journalists, scholars, artists and athletes.

Yet senior politicians must also do more. It would make sense for the leaders of the United States and China to meet quarterly to hash out issues that could lead to war (Taiwan) and those that might save the planet (pandemic prevention). We should avoid the complacency of the era of U.S.-China “engagement,” when frequent gatherings of mid-level officials from both countries produced few tangible results. That encouraged Beijing to believe that solutions to urgent problems could be endlessly deferred while leading to deep frustration in Washington. It is time that both nations began to treat the relationship with the seriousness it deserves.

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Christopher Wood is global head of equity strategy at Jefferies.

On April 20, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen stated that U.S. national security concerns “are not designed for us to gain a competitive economic advantage, or stifle China’s economic and technological modernization.”

She was clearly referring to the October announcement by the Commerce Department that it would block the supply of advanced semiconductors to China. The problem is that this policy represents a de facto declaration of economic war. In Beijing’s eyes, the export restrictions look like a targeted effort by Washington’s national security lobby to stop China from upgrading its economy, which intensifies the risk — given China’s sharply deteriorating demographic picture — that it could end up stuck in the dreaded middle-income trap. China’s gross domestic product per capita is only $12,814.

So while Yellen’s tone should be welcomed, it will not convince Beijing. Indeed, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin responded to her speech by saying that Washington’s “true intention is to deprive China of its development rights. It is pure economic coercion.” For this reason, President Biden’s recent talk of a “thaw” goes only so far. A warming of relations between Washington and Beijing is possible only if Americans back off from their stance on advanced semiconductors, which seems unlikely in the extreme.

The stated rationale for the semiconductor ban is that they could go into weapons of mass destruction. But this implies that China has expansionist territorial ambitions. This is not the case. Even if Beijing does want to dominate its own neighborhood, its main aim is to do business.

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Emily de La Bruyère is co-founder of Horizon Advisory and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies with a focus on China policy.

The Chinese Communist Party follows a deliberate, consistent strategy toward the United States that has not changed — and will not anytime soon. That strategy’s overarching goal is to overtake the United States and project power internationally. The current confrontation between America and China is because of this fundamental reality, not any of Washington’s policies.

What, then, would a thaw look like? It would mean that the United States, having concluded that confrontation is not worth it, would decide to back down from the defense of its interests.

In more concrete terms, this would entail a reversion to the situation that prevailed in the first 15 years of this century. In 2001, Beijing joined the World Trade Organization, allowing it to reap the benefits of a place in the free, liberal global market. For the decade and a half that followed, the Chinese Communist Party weaponized that place and broke the system’s rules with few, if any, repercussions. Beijing subsidized its state champions, dumped their goods, stole intellectual property, used economic ties to force geopolitical questions, and conducted a genocide at home. In the process, Beijing developed a chokehold over the U.S. economic and political systems — such that even today, with bipartisan recognition of China’s threat and a newly aggressive Beijing, competitive action struggles to keep pace with rhetoric and calls for a thaw risk prevailing.

All of this took place in an environment of (relatively) cordial U.S.-China relations because Washington simply wasn’t paying attention — or didn’t care.

Beijing’s strategy won’t change. Nor will the fundamental contradiction between U.S. and Chinese interests. The question is whether Washington is willing to face down that contradiction. Today, a thaw in name would be appeasement in practice.

Opinions about foreign policy