https://crsreports.congress.gov
Updated October 24, 2023
China Primer: U.S.-China Relations
Introduction
Congressional oversight and legislative activities related to
the People’s Republic of China (PRC, or China) have
expanded as Members’ concerns about PRC policies,
actions, and intentions have intensified. Members of the
118
th
Congress have so far introduced more than 400 bills
and 70 resolutions with provisions related to China.
Enacted laws include S. 619 (P.L. 118-2), the COVID
Origin Act of 2023, requiring the declassification of all
information related to potential links between the PRC’s
Wuhan Institute of Virology and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other adopted measures include H.Res. 11, establishing a
Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the
United States and the Chinese Communist Party.
Strategic Competition
The Joseph R. Biden Jr. Administration describes the
United States as engaged in competition with China over
the shape of the future global order, part of a broader
contest between democracies and autocracies. The
Administration’s October 2022 National Security Strategy
describes China as “America’s most consequential
geopolitical challenge,” and calls for the United States to
“out-compete” China by (1) investing in competitiveness,
innovation, resilience, and democracy at home; (2) aligning
U.S. efforts with those of allies and partners; and (3)
“compet[ing] responsibly with the PRC to defend our
interests and build our vision for the future.” The document
states that the Administration also seeks to “engage
constructively with the PRC wherever we can.”
Senior PRC officials have publicly objected to the U.S.
framing of relations as driven by geopolitical competition.
Meeting in October 2023 with a bipartisan Senate
delegation—the first congressional delegation to visit the
PRC in over four years—the PRC’s top leader, Communist
Party of China (CPC) General Secretary and PRC President
Xi Jinping, called for the United States and China to
“properly handle their relations, respect each other, coexist
in peace and pursue win-win cooperation.” In downplaying
competitive dynamics in the relationship, the PRC may
seek to sustain access to the U.S. market and to complicate
U.S. efforts to build international coalitions to address
perceived challenges from the PRC. When PRC leaders
acknowledge frayed relations with other countries, they
often portray China as a victim. In March 2023, Xi alleged
that since 2017, “Western countries led by the United States
have implemented all-around containment, encirclement
and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented
severe challenges to our country’s development.”
Bilateral Engagement
The PRC government kept China’s borders mostly closed
from March 2020 to January 2023 to enforce a “zero-
COVID” response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In-person
U.S.-PRC engagement at the leader level re-started in
November 2022, when President Biden and PRC leader Xi
met on the sidelines of a gathering of the G-20 nations in
Bali, Indonesia. Biden said at the time that he felt a
responsibility “to show that China and the United States can
manage our differences, prevent competition from
becoming anything ever near conflict, and to find ways to
work together on urgent global issues.” The U.S. and PRC
governments are preparing for a potential second in-person
meeting between the two leaders on the sidelines of the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping’s
leaders’ summit in San Francisco in mid-November 2023,
although Xi has yet to confirm his attendance.
Senior PRC Personnel Issues
A challenge for high-level U.S.-China diplomacy is the currently
depleted ranks of PRC government interlocutors.
• In July 2023, PRC President Xi signed an order removing
China’s then-Foreign Minister, Qin Gang, from his post. In
October 2023, Xi signed another order removing Qin
from his post as State Councilor for foreign affairs. Each
time, the PRC offered no explanation. Qin had been
China’s second-most-senior diplomat. Top diplomat Wang
Yi, a Politburo member who heads the office of the CPC’s
Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, is now also
serving as Foreign Minister.
• Xi’s October 2023 order also removed Li Shangfu from his
posts as Minister of Defense and State Councilor for
defense affairs, without explanation. The defense minister
post is currently vacant.
See CRS In Focus IF12505, China Primer: China’s Political System.
Public reports of a PRC surveillance balloon flying over the
continental United States led Secretary of State Antony J.
Blinken to call off a planned February 2023 trip to China.
He ultimately made his first visit to the PRC in his current
position in June 2023. Two other cabinet members followed
him: Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen (July 2023) and
Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo (August 2023).
Other senior Administration visitors to the PRC have
included Central Intelligence Agency Director William
Burns and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John
Kerry. Outcomes from 2023’s U.S. high-level visits include
new working groups and other dialogue mechanisms under
the Secretaries of State, Commerce, and the Treasury, and
climate envoy Kerry.
Critics, including some Members of Congress, have
questioned the Biden Administration’s focus on re-starting
high-level dialogue. Some have suggested that the effort
may constrain the Administration from addressing U.S.
concerns about such matters as PRC surveillance operations
directed at the United States and cyber hacking of U.S.
agency networks. Other Members have expressed support
for dialogue. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who
