As U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping gear up for their landmark meeting in San Francisco on Wednesday—their first in a year, aimed at dialing down the temperature between the world’s two biggest powers—the United States’ most comprehensive annual assessment of that bilateral relationship is striking a skeptical note about what can actually be achieved.
“The result of high-level meetings between the United States and China has been merely the promise of further meetings—that is, of more talk rather than concrete actions,” the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission wrote in its 2023 report to Congress, released on Tuesday. “China now appears to view diplomacy with the United States primarily as a tool for forestalling and delaying U.S. pressure over a period of years while China moves ever further down the path of developing its own economic, military, and technological capabilities.”
The annual report of the commission, formed more than two decades ago to provide policy recommendations to Congress on the national security implications of the U.S.-China relationship, provides a comprehensive snapshot of Washington’s relationship with Beijing and makes recommendations to Congress on how to best manage that relationship. The 30 recommendations featured in this year’s report highlight China’s increasingly “aggressive” foreign policy, particularly in technology and information.
