Ryan Hass, Ryan McElveen, and Lily McElwee
The Issue
Frictions between the United States and China are intensifying, yet even past geopolitical rivals found ways to collaborate on shared challenges where it squarely served national interests. In November 2022, the CSIS Freeman Chair in China Studies and the Brookings John L. Thornton China Center launched a project to explore safe and effective methods for collaboration among nonstate actors on key challenges facing both nations. The following brief distills takeaways from this work, which included historical case studies of collaboration during the Cold War, workshops with U.S. and PRC experts, and a track 2 dialogue on climate-smart agriculture designed to probe emerging findings.
Part I: Scoping the Challenge
The U.S.-China relationship dates to the nineteenth century, specifically to 1844, when the two countries signed their first diplomatic agreement, the Treaty of Wanghia, following the conclusion of the Opium Wars. In the nearly 200 years since, the bilateral relationship has oscillated between periods of intense engagement and estrangement. There have been times when both countries shared common adversaries and common pursuits, as well as other moments when the relationship was defined by enmity and even direct conflict, such as in the case of the Korean War.
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