Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues

U.S.-China relations have emerged as the frontier of global competition as the trade, industrial, and economic consensus of the unipolar period strains and fractures. In this context, the U.S.-China Student Dialogue met over the course of four weeks to bring students together to engage directly on contentious issues and build understanding. We reflected on the mutual belief that understanding each of our countries’ economic and geopolitical position in the 21st century cannot be accomplished in isolation, and that cooperation on shared international challenges, including climate change, global poverty, and economic stability, requires diplomacy that is rooted in people-to-people dialogue.

Much of our discussions centered on the divergent forces in U.S. policy vying to influence the future trajectory of the U.S.-China relationship—toward furthering economic cooperation on one hand and accelerating decoupling on the other. We considered the apparent futility embodied by efforts to preserve a free trade euphoria independent from the demands of securitization or domestic industrial contradictions, but also in attempts to entirely unravel the deep economic ties that bind both countries together. The acknowledgement that the conventional wisdom that governed the economic and trade landscape for our lives thus far has been perhaps irrevocably shattered served as a point of consensus from which all else flowed.

In an environment tinged by the pessimism of young people over our ability to afford a dignified future, we began to ask questions. How can the United States create a future for young people in an economy with unprecedented levels of inequality and poor public services? How can China address the needs of young people in a country with a rapidly aging population that threatens demographic and economic crisis amidst depressed demand? We collectively understood that making our voices heard will be one of the decisive factors in forging a promising future in both countries.

As we found common ground, our conversations shifted to learning more about one another as individuals and students. We sought a vicarious understanding of what it meant to be students at Peking and Georgetown University respectively, and to live in Beijing and Washington, D.C. Our conversations touched on topics including popular cultural assumptions, the elusive convenience of high-speed rail, and the worrying and increasing reliance of students on AI. We also shared perspectives on how widespread views of each other’s countries have shifted over time. In the case of the U.S. perspective on China, this evolution broadly reflects the country’s historical development and movement up the value chain from a producer of cheap consumer goods to a developer of advanced technologies, including solar, AI, electric vehicles, and rare earth magnets that the world now relies heavily on.

While some have embraced a chauvinistic vision of brinkmanship that fuels trade wars and a deepening diplomatic chasm, the U.S.-China relationship is tightly interwoven and requires deliberate engagement characterized by humility and curiosity. The future of U.S.-China relations is not destined to be a zero-sum Thucydides trap, but avoiding this preventable fate necessitates breaking down barriers. The U.S.-China Student Dialogue underscored that diplomacy begins at home and that an increasingly interconnected world requires understanding each other more meaningfully as countries and as human beings.

Solomon Bennett (G'26) is a first-year graduate student in the Master of Science in Foreign Service program at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.