Patricia M. Kim - Mentions and Appearances

There is a bipartisan consensus on the fact that China poses a broad challenge to the United States across multiple domains. I don’t believe we have a clear consensus on the precise mix of policies that are necessary to address this challenge. There certainly isn’t a consensus on how much de-risking and decoupling is necessary to strike the right balance between national security concerns and upholding American values and principles that have long held dear the free flow of information, people, trade and open markets.

There were expectations that early 2023 would be a window of opportunity for Washington and Beijing to get to work on building the guardrails for the relationship that both sides recognize are vital for preventing confrontation.

The United States and China share a strong common interest in not going to war with each other and global stability, generally speaking. This gives them a reason to engage with each other.

South Korea is currently juggling a number of competing interests. While the Yoon administration has vowed to enhance defense cooperation with the United States to deter the growing nuclear and missile threat from North Korea, it also needs Beijing’s cooperation to manage the North Korean nuclear challenge.

Beijing has long bristled at moves to strengthen the U.S.-(South Korea) alliance and South Korea's efforts to plug into U.S.-led initiatives in the region... Chinese leaders have called on their South Korean counterparts to oppose exclusive regional groupings and may choose to use China's economic leverage to keep Seoul from aligning too closely with Washington and the Quad.

While there’s some debate about the precise state of North Korea’s missile capabilities, including the new hypersonic missile it claims to have tested, what is clear is that North Korea’s continued advancement of its nuclear and missile programs are exacerbating the security dilemma in the region. Because diplomacy has failed thus far to restrain Pyongyang, Northeast Asian states, especially South Korea and Japan, feel as if they have no other choice but to increase their own military capabilities and joint capabilities with the United States to deter, or in the worst case, preempt, a North Korean attack. Beijing, however, claims these moves shift the military balance in the region in a way that threatens its own security, and that it must continue to advance its own strategic capabilities in response. In sum, North Korea’s ever-advancing missile and nuclear programs are creating major ripple effects on the region.

Pyongyang is likely to continue to make choices driven chiefly by its own interests and strategic timetables. China has never been able to dictate North Korea’s actions.

[China’s motivation is to avoid] a crisis in its neighborhood with the Winter Olympics around the corner and the 20th Party Congress coming up in the fall.

While the Biden administration has been very successful thus far on the alliance-building front, we’ve yet to see the establishment of a sustainable working relationship with China, largely because of Beijing’s resistance to the Biden administration’s proposed framework. I would count the upcoming summit as a success if the two leaders are able to jointly affirm that neither side seeks conflict or a new cold war and that they are empowering officials at the working levels to lay the foundations for responsible competition, including jointly working on pressing issues such as crisis management, nonproliferation, and climate change.

The Biden administration has framed the right approach toward China—declaring that Washington will seek to simultaneously compete and cooperate with Beijing while working closely with friends and allies to effectively meet the challenges posed by China. But operationalizing this strategy is no easy feat. Most critically, Beijing has yet to accept this framework thus far and has made clear that U.S.-Chinese cooperation is impossible as long as tensions exist in the broader relationship. Moreover, although there have been some notable achievements in bolstering U.S. alliances in recent weeks, there have also been setbacks with European partners following the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the surprise announcement of AUKUS, the Australia-United Kingdom-United States defense pact. Persistent and creative diplomacy and the careful balancing of interests, ideals, and relationships will be necessary to ensure that U.S. alliances remain robust and that U.S.-Chinese relations do not fray beyond repair and stray into dangerous territory.