OPINION — Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, at the ASEAN Summit. Rubio described the exchange as “constructive” and hinted at a possible upcoming meeting between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. China described the exchange as “constructive and pragmatic.”
This exchange followed the comments of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, at the Shangri-La Dialogues in Singapore on May 31, 2025: “Any attempt by China to conquer Taiwan by force would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world.” Despite these words of caution, in mid-June 2025 and in preceding months, China deployed fighter jets, naval vessels and drones around Taiwan in air-sea joint training exercises meant to intimidate Taipei.
China’s recent actions in the Yellow Sea, to include incursions into South Korean territorial waters and airspace, are also of concern. This comes at a time when China continues to claim all of the South China Sea as their own, despite a United Nations Tribunal’s 2016 ruling that China’s claims to the South China Sea, based on its “nine dash line” map, were not legally valid.
There is considerable concern that China will use its military to invade or blockade Taiwan by 2027, when China supposedly would have the military might to attempt unification by force. That would be a grave mistake.
The U.S. – China relationship is tense, with some predicting an eventual war, despite $582.4 billion in total trade with China in 2024, $126.9 billion of U.S. foreign direct investment in China and over 277,000 Chinese students studying in the U.S. China’s actions in the South China, East China and Yellow Seas and their attempted military intimidation of Taiwan all contribute to this tense relationship.
The U.S. was there for China
The U.S. was there for China when Deng Xiaoping reached out to the U.S. in 1979, after normalization of relations, and established a strategic relationship with the U.S. that contributed to the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the end of the Cold War in 1991 and joint U.S. – China cooperation on counter terrorism, counter nuclear proliferation, counter narcotics and joint efforts to counter international organized crime. And there were over 300,000 Chinese students studying in the U.S. with significant U.S. investment in China, which contributed to providing China with Most Favored Nation status in 2000, a move that exponentially expanded bilateral trade.
And it was the U.S. that got China into the World Trade Organization in December 2001. Indeed, China’s membership in WTO favorably impacted China’s economic development; it was a catalyst for China’s economic growth and modernization.
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China can do more to change its tense relationship with the U.S.
Wouldn’t it be nice if Mr. Xi reached out to Mr. Trump and asked to meet to discuss some of the positive things we could be doing together to address some of the ills affecting the global community, like food scarcity, pandemics, health care, nuclear proliferation, narcotics trafficking, international organized crime – the list goes on and on. The willingness of these two superpowers to work jointly on these global problems, as we did in the 1980s and 1990s, would be welcomed by all countries, except for the Russian Federation and Iran.
The recent meeting of Marco Rubio and Wang Yi and hopefully the eventual meeting of Presidents Xi and Trump could be the beginning of a relationship that not only deals with the tension in the bilateral relationship but also deals with the common good both nations could do if we worked together on a myriad of socio-economic and geopolitical challenges confronting the global community. Moving in this would require bold and sustained leadership, reminiscent of the 1980s and 1990s.
This column by Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joseph DeTrani was first published in The Washington Times
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