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

Before I proceed with this first reflection about my participation in the U.S.-China Student Dialogue, I will recall my group’s process to decide our overall speaking order. I believed that out of a shared sense that we wanted to ensure fairness, we arrived at an unstated system of asking another student from the other country to share their thoughts after each of us spoke. If a U.S. student began the conversation, they would then pass the conversation on to a Chinese student. This ensured that neither side’s students could monopolize the conversation. It also made the conversation feel like an ongoing dialogue as students from corresponding sides built off each other.

It is also important to note that all three dialogues referenced occurred during the 2024 U.S. presidential transition. It was natural to compare expectations between Donald Trump’s first term, Joe Biden’s term, and Trump’s second term. Between Biden and Trump’s Indo-Pacific Strategies (IPS), it is clear that Biden’s approach focused on building a net of alliances and on transnational threats such as climate change. Trump’s IPS raised alarms on China’s state-led industrial policies, building an international (perhaps at the tradeoff of regional) consensus on China’s trade practices, and counterintelligence. My group thought that Trump would likely have more support and more industry-facing sets of advisors (such as Elon Musk) for his second term. Although part of Trump’s brand was going after Chinese trade and currency practices, there was a sense that industry advisors could remind him of the potential market disruptions from being too aggressive in his second term compared to his first.

Moving on from peace and security, we talked about how global governance might look going forward. We noted three trends: First, expect the United States to focus more on the Indo-Pacific region since the Republicans seem to have attached Ukraine to the Democrats. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly stated that the United States should focus more on the region. Second, if China-U.S. relations continue to struggle, the global order may start to look fragmented even if global institutions such as the United Nations remain. For example, in space, U.S. law prohibits working with China bilaterally in most cases, and the United States has a vision for space policy potentially separate from China in the Artemis Accords. Lastly, related to Trump’s second term, one may expect continuing far-right populist momentum globally that discredits the benefits of working via global institutions to instead focus on narrow national priorities. Perhaps some of the most dramatic and unfortunate losses in progress will be in climate change.

For our last session, we analyzed the history of climate change cooperation between the United States and China. If conditions were more cooperative, both sides could make an effective G2 due to the differences in allies that we traditionally align with. This was the dynamic during the Barack Obama administration’s Paris Climate Accords negotiations. However, there are real challenges today in terms of tying climate change to geopolitical issues, conversations around differentiated responsibilities, and competition that may result in redundant rather than complementary diplomatic solutions.

Angelo Paule (G'25) is a second-year graduate student Master of Science in Foreign Service program focusing on Science, Technology, and International Affairs.