Beyond diplomacy: Building an architecture for China-US relations

Editor's note: Bradley Blankenship, a special commentator for CGTN, is an investigative journalist, columnist, author, and political analyst who is also the founder of the Northern Kentucky Truth & Accountability Project. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Meetings between the heads of state of major economies are often judged by breakthroughs. Did the leaders sign a major agreement? Did one side make a concession? Was a longstanding dispute resolved?

That may be the wrong standard by which to judge the latest meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in Washington.

The more consequential development may actually instead be the gradual construction of mechanisms allowing China and the United States to live with disagreements that neither side expects to disappear.

That is important because China-US relations are unlikely to return to an earlier period in which economic engagement could largely be separated from questions of technology, national security and geopolitical competition. The two countries will continue to compete. They will continue to disagree over major issues. Yet they also remain economically interconnected and share interests in preventing bilateral disputes from escalating into wider crises.

As a result, the important issue is no longer simply whether China and the United States will cooperate or compete. Instead, it's whether they can construct a relationship capable of accommodating both simultaneously. That appears to be the idea behind what the two sides have termed a "constructive relationship of strategic stability."

According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry's account of Thursday's meeting, Xi described the objective as a relationship in which cooperation remains the mainstay, competition stays within proper limits, differences are managed and peace can be expected.

This formulation is more sophisticated than a diplomatic call for better relations. It points toward a framework for coexistence between two major powers whose interests sometimes overlap and sometimes diverge.

Stability does not mean agreement

The first thing to understand about such a framework is what it does not require. Strategic stability does not mean eliminating every tariff, export restriction or geopolitical disagreement. Nor does it mean that either country abandons its technological ambitions or its understanding of its national interests.

Indeed, the Washington meeting itself demonstrates how much remains unresolved. The United States and China have extended their existing trade truce by two months while negotiations toward a broader agreement continue. Major economic disagreements remain, including questions surrounding tariffs, technology restrictions, critical minerals and agricultural trade.

The Taiwan question also remains a fundamental area of disagreement. Xi reiterated China's position during his meeting with Trump, while reactions from Taiwan again demonstrated the considerable differences surrounding the issue.

None of this resembles the disappearance of strategic competition. But stability should not be confused with agreement. For two countries as large and consequential as China and the United States, a stable relationship may instead mean placing disagreements within a political structure capable of preventing one dispute from overwhelming every other aspect of the relationship. This is an entirely realistic objective. 

From diplomacy to institutions

There are signs that this process is beginning to extend beyond meetings between presidents.

The reciprocal visits by Trump and Xi within less than half a year are unprecedented in the history of China-US relations. At the same time, communication is taking place through economic officials and other government departments rather than solely at the presidential level.

This matters because presidential diplomacy can provide direction, but it cannot manage a relationship this complex by itself. Trade disputes require economic negotiators. Military risks require communication between defense officials. Technology questions increasingly require specialists capable of discussing issues that barely existed when the current architecture of China-US diplomacy was first constructed.

Perhaps the clearest example is artificial intelligence. China and the United States are competing intensely to develop advanced AI systems and the computing infrastructure supporting them. Neither country is likely to surrender its ambition to remain at the technological frontier.

Yet technological competition does not eliminate shared risks. US and Chinese officials have already begun discussing AI safety, with another round of talks expected in Shenzhen in southern China within two months. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said the discussions have included the possibility of a "notification mechanism" for AI-related emergencies.

Xi also raised AI directly during his talks with Trump, arguing that China and the United States have opportunities for cooperation despite competition in the field and emphasizing the importance of maintaining human control over AI technologies. The Chinese readout said Trump supported continued dialogue and cooperation on the issue.

AI could therefore become an early test of what "constructive strategic stability" means in practice. The United States and China can compete to develop better models, chips and applications while simultaneously recognizing that neither benefits from uncontrolled autonomous systems, major AI-enabled cyber incidents or other technological risks escaping human control. Competition and cooperation are not necessarily opposites.

Managing the security dilemma

This principle extends beyond technology. One of the oldest problems in international relations is the security dilemma: Measures one country regards as defensive can be interpreted as threatening by another, prompting countermeasures that leave both sides feeling less secure.

This dynamic is particularly dangerous when economic policy, technology and national security increasingly overlap.

An export restriction intended to protect national security can be perceived as an attempt to suppress technological development. A measure intended to secure a supply chain can be interpreted as economic containment. The resulting response then appears to confirm the suspicions that produced the original policy.

This process can become self-reinforcing even when neither side initially seeks confrontation.

Regular communication cannot eliminate those conflicting interests. What it can do is to provide governments with more information about one another's intentions, create opportunities to contain disputes and reduce the risk that individual measures trigger disproportionate escalation.

In this sense, the value of the Washington meeting may lie less in producing a single transformative agreement than in adding another layer to an emerging architecture of communication.

Managed interdependence

The China-US relationship is sometimes described as though the two countries must eventually choose between engagement and separation, but reality is considerably more complicated.

The two countries remain deeply connected through trade, global supply chains, financial markets, scientific development and people-to-people ties, even as governments have placed greater emphasis on economic security and technological competition.

What is emerging could therefore be described as managed interdependence. Neither side assumes that commercial integration will eliminate political competition. Neither can realistically behave as though the world's two largest economies have no need to deal with one another.

This helps explain why seemingly modest diplomatic mechanisms matter, because the accumulation of such mechanisms can create something that is valuable precisely because disagreement persists: predictability.

Businesses making investment decisions, governments navigating international crises and countries whose economies depend on trade with both China and the United States all have an interest in knowing that disagreements between Beijing and Washington will not automatically become crises.

The real test will therefore come after Washington. Every period of improved China-US relations eventually encounters another dispute. The significance of the current effort will be determined by what happens when that dispute arrives.

If economic negotiations continue, AI communication becomes institutionalized and political dialogue remains open even during periods of disagreement, then constructive strategic stability will have acquired substance beyond presidential diplomacy.

The objective is not a world without China-US competition. The more consequential possibility is a relationship in which competition does not automatically become confrontation, disagreement does not preclude cooperation and neither country allows every individual dispute to determine the direction of the whole relationship.

If such an architecture can be built and sustained, that may ultimately prove more important than any single breakthrough announced at a top-level meeting.

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