Can China-US Relations Make Good on the ‘San Francisco Vision’?

In November 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden hosted China’s Xi Jinping in California for their first dedicated bilateral summit (their only previous in-person discussion had been a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, in November 2022). What became known as the “San Francisco summit” – despite actually taking place in nearby Woodside – was hailed by both sides as a breakthrough in China-U.S. relations. Chinese officials in particular described the summit as a “new start” and a “turning point” for the China-U.S. relationship, referring to the “San Francisco vision” in later bilateral engagements.

But for an event to really count as a “new start,” what follows has to be different from what came before. How have China-U.S. relations changed since the Biden-Xi summit?

The most obvious progress has come on the lowest-hanging fruit: initiatives designed to restore badly frayed “people-to-people” ties.

While there was no joint statement after the Biden-Xi summit, the separate readouts both promised a “significant further increase in scheduled passenger flights” (to use the White House’s phrasing). In 2019, there were over 300 round-trip flights between China and the United States each week. The pandemic slashed that to essentially zero, as the U.S. banned flights from China in a desperate attempt to avoid COVID-19 contagion and China reciprocated with its own bans.

While China fully reopened to foreign travel by early 2023, direct passenger flights between China and the U.S. have been slow to recover. As of the end of September 2023, there were just 36 round-trip flights between the two countries each week – around one-tenth of the pre-pandemic level. Fewer flights means higher costs and bigger headaches for would-be passengers, discouraging travel between China and the United States.

In this area, there has already been notable progress since the Biden-Xi summit. By the end of November 2023, the number of direct China-U.S. flights had nearly doubled, reaching 70 a week. That’s still a far cry from the pre-pandemic normal, but nevertheless a clear improvement.

Another promising sign is the return of “panda diplomacy.” As of the end of 2023, the Atlanta Zoo was the only place in the United States to still host pandas, and those bears are due to be returned to China by the end of 2024 unless their loan agreement is extended.

While in San Francisco, Xi had hinted that China was willing to send a new batch of pandas to the United States, although he didn’t go so far as to make a formal announcement. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi made things a bit more concrete, stating in early January that “preparations are ready for a giant panda return to California within the year.”

No agreement has been signed, and it’s not clear which zoo, precisely, might receive the promised pandas. But panda lovers have more reason for hope than they did this time last year.

On the government level, the biggest outcome of the Biden-Xi summit was the announcement that China and the United States would resume military-to-military talks, which Beijing had scuttled following then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August 2022 visit to Taiwan. Sure enough, on January 10, senior military officials from both sides gathered at the Pentagon for the first in-person iteration of the Defense Policy Coordination Talks in four years.

The meeting, led by the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia, and China’s deputy director of the Central Military Commission’s Official for International Military Cooperation, touched on “regional and global security issues.” But perhaps most importantly, the talks “set the agenda for further exchanges between the U.S. and China for the remainder of the calendar year,” according to a readout from the U.S. Department of Defense.

Before that, in December 2023, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Brown met with his Chinese counterpart, General Liu Zhenli, for the first time. The virtual meeting “discussed the importance of working together to responsibly manage competition, avoid miscalculations, and maintain open and direct lines of communication.”

At this point, then, the U.S. and Chinese militaries are mainly talking about why, how, and when to talk – but that’s better than the lack of contact before the Biden-Xi summit.

Also in December, China announced its new defense minister, Admiral Dong Jun. China had repeatedly refused U.S. requests for meetings with Dong’s predecessor, General Li Shangfu (who is now presumed to be under investigation for corruption) in protest over the embarrassment of U.S. sanctions targeting Li. Dong faces no such sanctions, potentially paving the way for the first meeting between U.S. and Chinese defense ministers since November 2022.

The other big announcements from the summit are moving forward as well, if more slowly. For example, Biden and Xi spoke of governmental discussions on managing the risks posed by artificial intelligence. After a January 26-27 meeting between U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and China’s top foreign affairs official, Wang Yi, it was announced that those talks were set to begin sometime in the spring.

As Graham Webster and Ryan Hass noted in a recent analysis for the Brookings Institution, AI is a massive field, covering “everything from self-driving cars and autonomous weapons to facial recognition, face-swapping apps, ChatGPT, and a potential robot apocalypse.” The first step toward making AI talks a reality, then, will be defining the scope of the talks and the specific problems to be addressed.

Finally, the White House readout of the Biden-Xi summit pointedly played up China’s promises of cooperation on drug trafficking issues, specifically related to fentanyl. China had agreed to establish a “working group for ongoing communication and law enforcement coordination on counternarcotics issues,” the White House said, alongside promises to crack down on the manufacturing and smuggling of fentanyl precursors.

The working group held its first meeting on January 30. The day before the meeting, a senior Biden administration official told reporters that “we’ve already seen tangible impact on the ground. China has moved to shut down a number of companies and operations that were trafficking in the illicit chemicals and precursors.”

China Daily also elaborated on the topic, noting that China and U.S. counternarcotics authorities are “resuming regular communications” (something made possible by the U.S. lifting sanctions on two key institutions in China). The state-owned media outlet claimed, again without elaborating, that China has “intensified its campaigns against the smuggling, illicit manufacturing, trafficking and abuse of fentanyl-related substances” and “taken action” in cases where the U.S. provided specific information on illicit activity.

That said, the article framed this cooperation as a sign of China’s beneficence, “to try and help the U.S. get a grip on its fentanyl problem.” China Daily included a warning that this cooperation might not last: “The progress in resuming China-U.S. counternarcotics cooperation has not come easy and it should be cherished by both sides. The U.S. cannot expect cooperation from another country while harming the latter's interests.”

Despite the unsubtle threat, overall China has been sending strong signals that it desires continued cooperation with the United States. Foreign Minister Wang Yi said as much in early January: “For the two countries and the world, China-U.S. cooperation is not something dispensable or optional. It is a compulsory question that must be addressed in real earnest.”

Wang was speaking at a massive banquet to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and the United States. In fact, Wang attended several different events marking the occasion, and gave remarks at each. China also posted a statement summarizing “congratulatory letters” exchanged by Xi and Biden on the anniversary.

Notably, the White House made no public mention of the letters. Nor did U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken host or even attend any corresponding events in the United States. The United States didn’t even send its ambassador to the Beijing banquet attended by Wang Yi; instead, Washington was represented by its charge d’affaires.

While the United States seemed to be earnestly courting China last summer, dispatching four Cabinet-level officials to Beijing in quick succession, today China’s government seems more interested in sending positive signals about the importance of the relationship. There’s a combination of factors behind this dynamic, including the Biden administration not wanting to be seen as overly close to Beijing in a crucial election year and the distraction of major conflicts unfolding in Gaza and Ukraine.

But at some point the lack of diplomatic reciprocation from Washington could irk Beijing, and potentially jeopardize the “new start” before it really materializes.