Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken cheered on the sidelines of a basketball game in Shanghai on Wednesday night and chatted with students on the New York University Shanghai campus on Thursday and met with American business owners. This all underscores the nature of the economic, educational and cultural relationships that the United States explicitly portrays as beneficial to both countries.
But hanging over those pleasantries during his visit to China this week are several steps the U.S. is taking to cut economic ties in areas that the Biden administration says threaten American interests. And these will also be the focus of greater attention from Chinese officials.
Even as the Biden administration seeks to stabilize relations with China, it is pushing forward several economic measures that would limit China's access to the U.S. economy and technology. She is poised to raise tariffs on Chinese steel, solar panels and other key products to protect American factories from cheap imports. It is considering further restrictions on China's access to advanced semiconductors to prevent Beijing from developing sophisticated artificial intelligence that could be used on the battlefield.
This week, Congress also passed legislation that would force ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, to sell its stake in the app within nine to 12 months or leave the United States entirely. The president signed it on Wednesday, although the measure is likely to be challenged in court.
Mr. Blinken's visit, which was expected to take him to Beijing for high-level government meetings on Friday, had a much warmer tone than the trip he took to China last year. This trip was the first after a Chinese spy balloon flew across the United States, sending the American public into disarray.
In a meeting with Shanghai's Communist Party secretary on Thursday morning, Mr. Blinken said direct engagement between the U.S. and China was both valuable and necessary.
“We have an obligation to our people – indeed, an obligation to the world – to manage relations between our two countries responsibly,” he said.
Later that morning, he spoke to students at NYU's Shanghai campus and said the educational exchange the students were participating in provided “ballast” to a complicated and confrontational relationship.
Since President Biden met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in California in November, U.S.-China relations appear to be more stable, without matching the dramatic ups and downs of trade disputes under former President Donald J. Trump.
But the Biden administration is still seeking a more restrictive economic relationship with China.
This also includes the control of semiconductor technology, which both sides are raising as a more important issue than ever. The Biden administration is considering further export controls, particularly on factories that help produce advanced semiconductors for Chinese tech giant Huawei.
“By explicitly seeking to weaken China’s technical capabilities, particularly in advanced AI, the United States has pushed export controls to the forefront of the U.S.-China agenda,” said Emily Benson, a trade expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
In a phone call between Mr Biden and Mr Xi earlier this month, both leaders highlighted technology controls as matters of key importance.
Mr. Biden stressed that the United States would continue to take necessary actions to prevent advanced American technologies from being used to undermine its own national security, without unduly restricting trade and investment, the White House said.
Mr. Xi said imposing new sanctions on China does not represent “risk reduction” but creates risks. If the United States aims to “curb China's high-tech development and deprive China of its legitimate right to development, China will not stand idly by,” he said, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
U.S. officials say their restrictions are necessary given China's authoritarian government and state economic model. But the moves have angered Chinese leaders and pushed tensions over economic measures to their highest level in years.
The measures are not just coming from the U.S. government: Susan Shirk, the author of “Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise,” said China has moved toward a more independent industrial policy and sought to supplant the United States as a state High-tech superpower under Mr. Xi.
“Xi openly admits that while he wants China to become less dependent on other countries, he wants to maintain other countries' dependence on China 'as a strong countermeasure and deterrent,' as he put it, 'against them interrupting deliveries,'” Ms. Shirk said.
China has also allowed security concerns to affect more of its economy, even as Mr. Xi and other Chinese leaders have sought to reassure foreign companies that their investments are welcome. A new national security law has expanded Beijing's reach into Hong Kong, threatening the city's status as a financial hub. American executives are alarmed by China's investigations into foreign companies as well as the country's broader rules against sharing data and information with foreigners.
Despite China's complaints about the U.S. government's efforts to crack down on TikTok, China itself has banned other Western social media services for decades. Apple said last week that Beijing had ordered WhatsApp and Threads removed from app stores in China.
Mr. Blinken and other U.S. officials have emphasized that American export controls, sanctions and other restrictions imposed on Chinese technology companies apply to only a small part of the broader U.S.-China relationship. It is said that trade is being promoted elsewhere.
In a report this week, the U.S.-China Business Council, a group of 270 American companies doing business in China, estimated that U.S. exports to China supported more than 900,000 American jobs in 2022, even as merchandise exports fell in 2023 due to the China's slowdown economy, US tariffs and other factors.
“It is important for us to remind U.S. lawmakers and people in positions of influence that every state and congressional district in the U.S. has its own economic and trade relationship with China and is carefully considering changes in U.S.-China trade policy should be,” he told Craig Allen, the group’s president.