Rebuilding Sino-US ties from ground up

While the administration of US President-elect Joe Biden is more than a month away from taking office and will be busy with domestic issues, China experts see this as a good time for organizations in the United States to advance relations with China.

That was the view of speakers at the annual China Business Conference hosted by the America China Society of Indiana, or ACSI, which was held virtually for the first time.

Colin Renk, executive director at the ACSI, said the half-day event on Monday featured 16 speakers from China and the US. Discussions ranged from the future of US-China relations and bilateral trade to the impact of COVID-19 on exports.

Executives from LHP Engineering Solutions and LER TechForce from Indiana also shared insights gained from success in expanding their businesses in China during the past decade.

"More than 190 attendees participated in the conference, including business representatives from Indiana, Chongqing, Dalian, Harbin, Hebei, Jiangsu, Shandong, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Sichuan and Zhejiang," Renk said.

Renk said the participants were able to participate in a B2B (business to business) directory, visit virtual booths and learn more about the speakers and organizations represented.

"When others have taken a step back, the ACSI and Indiana want to take a step forward in building bilateral, mutually beneficial trade and investment ties with China," Renk said of the conference.

"Our goal has been to set the bar for leading subnational engagement, and through the success of our virtual China Business Conference, we hope that we can continue to showcase a positive relationship."

Vital exchanges

Discussing the local role in building US-China relations, experts see subnational-level exchanges－those below the national level including by region, state or local authorities and organizations－as vital to the overall ties between the countries.

Ryan Hass, chairman of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, pointed out that during Biden's presidential campaign, the Democrat had said that he sees China as a competitor, not an enemy; a challenger, not a rival.

"Those words have meaning and significance. A competitor is someone you try to outpace and outshine. An enemy is someone you try to kneecap to slow down. We are already beginning to see early hints of Biden's policy (toward China)," he said.

Hass said that enthusiasm for decoupling will wane in the US. In addition, the Biden administration will have to deal with many big and difficult domestic challenges first, allowing time and space for subnational-exchange activity, he added.

"It is going to take a while for the wheel of diplomacy to churn into motion on the US-China front," he said. "This will create some space for subnational actors to do some pacesetting and agenda-setting in terms of identifying areas that are ripe to advance our efforts with China."

Wendy Leutert, a Chinese studies expert at Indiana University, said: "Having a successful subnational economic cooperation is also a very important part of the overall US-China relationship and it helps to promote more positive bilateral engagement at the national level."

In recent years, there have been fewer exchanges between organizations from the US and China compared with earlier years. However, Leutert said she hopes that the Biden administration will expand and institutionalize those exchanges and communication channels.

"Subnational investment is an important way to really align interests of both leaders in China and the US and in theory could become a point of leverage to national policymakers in (Washington) DC to support less coercing economic policy toward China," she said.

While Leutert is optimistic about more productive relations between the US and China, she said: "It might take some time to increase communications to really start rebuilding the trust and commitment for more successful subnational level ties in the future."