Dialogue seeks tangible results in Sino-US ties

Representatives from China and the United States participated in a dialogue on Tuesday in Beijing, where they called for joint efforts to translate the consensus reached by the two countries' heads of state into concrete action and tangible results, while also suggesting expansion of practical cooperation across a number of fields.

They highlighted mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation as key to keeping bilateral ties on a stable track, while stressing the need for the two countries to jointly address global challenges and bring greater stability to the world.

The gathering was the third China-US Track 1.5 Dialogue, jointly launched in October 2023 by the International Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the Asia Society as a platform connecting representatives from politics, strategy, business, academics, civil society and youth in both countries.

In May, President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump agreed to make the building of a constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability the new positioning for bilateral ties, providing strategic guidance for the relationship over the next three years and beyond.

John L. Thornton, cochair of the Asia Society Board of Trustees, said Xi and Trump are both historic figures who know each other well and have a good personal relationship — a combination he described as highly unusual.

"I think it's very important that the benefit of that is concrete and seen by the people, both in the United States and in China," Thornton said.

He added that the key test was what the new positioning would mean in practice and whether it could produce results. "There are a lot of possibilities for progress, and I'm optimistic that there will be progress," he said.

Christopher Nixon Cox, a member of the Richard Nixon Foundation's board of directors and a grandson of former US president Richard Nixon, called the leader-to-leader relationship "the most important thing", saying it gave him confidence about the future of bilateral ties.

While acknowledging that China and the US would continue to have differences, Cox said they should seek common ground in the fields of artificial intelligence, agriculture, food security and economic affairs to help build a stable and prosperous world.

"There are many things with AI that we can agree on," he said, citing the need to prevent it from harming children.

Cox also invoked Nixon's historic visit to China in 1972 as an example of the political courage required on both sides. "There are many lessons from my grandfather's trip to China," he said. "One is that nothing happens without courage."

Liu Haixing, minister of the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, said that a stable China-US relationship was in itself the greatest contribution to world peace and development.

Liu called for expanding common interests, rejecting zero-sum thinking, managing differences through clear policy signals, and upholding the bottom line of no conflict and no confrontation. 

Competition between major countries is normal, he said, but that should not define the entire relationship, emphasizing that it should be a healthy and positive race rather than a life-or-death gladiatorial contest.

A zero-sum approach, he added, would distort market rules, disrupt global industrial cooperation and undermine market confidence.

Craig Allen, former president of the US-China Business Council and a nonresident senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis, said that both governments needed to follow the common framework agreed upon by the two leaders. 

He said maintaining an open trade and investment environment was critical to achieving the two leaders' goals. Warning that decoupling would "make us both poorer" and that "neither side can afford to decouple", Allen described the Chinese and US economies as "the two engines of growth in the global economy", saying robust growth in both was essential to global stability.

Sean Stein, president of the US-China Business Council, said that China's importance to US companies extended well beyond the size of its market.

"Think of China not as a market but as a platform. That's what's important," Stein said. China's technological ecosystem, the partnerships companies form and the experience they gain there help shape products and business processes used in other markets, he added.

The council's 2026 member survey found that 95 percent of respondents viewed their China operations as at least somewhat important to staying globally competitive.

"China is a really important part of global competitiveness for American companies," Stein said.