National Committee on U.S.-China Relations

NCUSCR fosters communication and exchange between the United States and China in support of productive bilateral relations and U.S. national interests.

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

🔬🧪 Why are clinical trials moving faster in China?

Amy Abernethy (Cofounder, Highlander Health) and Ruby Wang (@rcjwang) (Director, @LINTRISHealth) discuss differences between U.S. and Chinese approaches to clinical trials, what each country can learn from the other, and opportunities for cooperation.

▶️ Watch: https://t.co/gaI1GVy39x

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

🇯🇵🇨🇳 What does the Japan-China rift mean for the U.S.?
@AdamPLiff (@IndianaUniv) and Kristin Vekasi (@umontana) join Evan Medeiros (@Georgetown) to discuss rising tensions between Japan and China, Beijing’s economic pressure campaign, and the implications for the United States.
▶️ Watch: https://t.co/ouzFHM2zzO

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

NCUSCR President Stephen Orlins told the BBC that sustained high-level engagement between Trump and Xi reduces the risk of a "confrontational relationship," as Xi arrives in Washington this week for his first U.S. state visit since 2015: https://t.co/VMiMhCNPxg

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

In 1999, a junior high social studies teacher from Plum Borough, PA taught English in Luoyang, China through the U.S.-China Teachers Exchange Program — and helped raise $5,000 for a desert farmer, Yin Yuzhen, to plant trees in Inner Mongolia. 26 years and 50,000 trees later, they reunited. Hear Ron Sakolsky's story on our newest podcast: https://t.co/drLzVXxU5R

#USChinaRelations

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

Ahead of next week's Trump-Xi summit, NPR looked at how "Track Two" dialogues are keeping expert-level U.S.-China conversations going even as official trust on AI stays thin. Incoming National Committee President Sarah Beran spoke with NPR about what's at stake: https://t.co/fg1fhLk4P1

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

How are Japan, China, and the United States managing tensions in the East China Sea?

Sheila Smith (@CFR_org) joins us to share how this moment fits into a broader picture of territorial disputes, roughly 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan, joint China-Russia military activity near Japanese territory, and Japan's own expanding defense capabilities.

Why are open channels of communication between Japan, China, and the United States so important for managing escalation?

▶️ Watch full interview: https://t.co/lRv7jlGIAf

#USChinaRelations #EastChinaSea #Japan

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

#PIPFellow @LelandLazarus examines how China is expanding its presence in Latin America and the Caribbean, through ports, digital infrastructure, and security partnerships, in his new book, Dragon in the Americas, out now from @routledgebooks. https://t.co/8v8Q57KRQF

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

🇪🇺🇨🇳 Trade between the EU and China makes up almost 30% of global trade and 35% of global GDP — but the relationship has changed fast. As China's exports move up the value chain, they're now competing directly with European-made goods instead of complementing them.

Agatha Kratz (@rhodium_group) breaks down where EU-China trade tension is headed — and how U.S.-China friction factors in.

▶️ Watch: https://t.co/dLLO6o3D2I

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

Do the U.S. and China still share a policy on North Korea? President Trump has scaled back military exercises with Seoul and extended an olive branch to Pyongyang — while North Korea deepens military ties with Russia and abandons its goal of reunification with the South. @VictorDCha (CSIS) and @suea_thornton (Yale, NCUSCR Director) join @JCorrado1953 of @koreasociety to discuss who manages the next crisis on the Korean Peninsula if Washington and Beijing's approaches diverge. Watch: https://t.co/7OGu8Jli7G

#NorthKorea #USChinaRelations

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

China had twice as many college students as the United States by 2025, four times as many STEM graduates, and double the number of STEM Ph.D.'s — but Beijing still sees a system in need of reform.

Gerard Postiglione (@gerrypost79) joins the National Committee to break down the three structural challenges facing China's higher education system as it works toward a 2035 world-class goal: graduate employment, access, and governance.

Watch: https://t.co/zPtfh9mIbJ

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

Beijing isn't creating the wave of Chinese pop culture reaching U.S. audiences — it's amplifying one already underway.

That's the argument from Shaoyu Yuan (@shaoyu_yuan), who describes a "state amplification model": China's government builds the infrastructure, but the trends themselves, TikTok, EVs, and C-dramas among them, come from companies, creators, and platform algorithms.

Yuan is careful to note that liking Chinese apps or admiring Chinese tech isn't the same as political trust, a distinction that matters for how policymakers read this shift.

Journalist Rebecca Fannin (@rfannin) joins Yuan and moderator Michael Berry (@Bairuiwen) to unpack it. https://t.co/FdE9sr3H02

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

Beijing's rare-earth dominance is often described as the fulfillment of a decades-old master plan, first foretold when Deng Xiaoping declared in the early 1990s that "the Middle East has oil, China has rare-earth elements."

NCUSCR #PIPFellow @jessicacweiss and co-author Gloria Xiong (Colby College) push back on that story for @ForeignAffairs. They trace how China's rare-earth industry actually developed: through messy price wars, environmentally destructive overproduction, and years of resistance from local governments that Beijing struggled to rein in. Beijing didn't start treating rare earths as geopolitical leverage until a 2010 dispute with Japan, and even then, it moved cautiously for years afterward.

The authors argue the current standoff is less a long-planned Chinese strategy than an escalating action-reaction spiral that neither side fully controls. Looking forward, they call for Washington to pair continued deterrence with reciprocal de-escalation, alongside sustained investment in American competitiveness, innovation, and workforce development, rather than relying on economic pressure alone.

Read the full piece: https://t.co/DTMwgWg89J

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

🇺🇸🇨🇳 China dominates much of the global critical mineral supply chain.

Cory Combs (@triviumchina) joins us to discuss what the United States is doing about it.

▶️ Watch: https://t.co/hh89PssI6j

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

Do more people around the world now trust China than the U.S.? Pew Research's Dr. Laura Silver breaks down a new 37-country survey showing rising confidence in Xi Jinping, falling confidence in the U.S. president, and a possible turning point in global opinion — watch: https://t.co/LyiJ0ysDvm

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

Blanket exclusion of Chinese investment might feel like it protects U.S. industry — but @NCUSCR #PIPFellow @MegRithmire argues it's actually cutting Americans off from the technological frontier. Her case for a smarter, conditional-access model, in a piece co-authored for @ForeignAffairs: https://t.co/nYaHmcj9c6

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

🇺🇸🇨🇳 Why does the United States rely on China for critical minerals?

From fighter jets to fridges, critical minerals are everywhere — and China dominates key chokepoints in their supply chains. @coryjcombs (@triviumchina) joins us to unpack the economic and security stakes of U.S. reliance on China for critical minerals.

▶️ Watch: https://t.co/Ol2wZMSVyd

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

U.S. companies in China are chasing rebounding profits even as tariffs, export controls, and a fragile trade truce raise the stakes. @sean_stein, president of @USChinaBusiness, joins National Committee President @sorlins to unpack USCBC's 2026 Member Survey of 175 American companies operating in China.

Stein breaks down why China remains essential to American firms despite bilateral tariffs, Chinese rare earth export controls, rising competition from Chinese firms, and what's at stake as the U.S.-China trade truce nears its November expiration.

Watch the full conversation: https://t.co/tQmrrpBY9D

#USChinaRelations #USChinaBusiness

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

PIP Fellow Maria Repnikova (@MariaRepnikova) joins PIP Fellow Xiaoyu Pu (@pu_xiaoyu) to discuss China's soft power strategy in Africa, focusing on Ethiopia as a case study.

Repnikova identifies three mechanisms behind China's approach: material incentives, values promotion, and narrative control, finding a far messier picture on the ground than most accounts suggest.

Ethiopian recipients aren't just recipients: Repnikova's fieldwork shows them negotiating and appropriating China's overtures on their own terms. Watch the full interview: https://t.co/WYPFupVyZC

#USChinaRelations #SoftPower #ChinaAfrica

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

On June 12, the U.S. government placed export controls on Anthropic's two most capable AI models, the first time a frontier model itself, not just the chips beneath it, was treated as a controlled item.

Days later, Chinese firms Z. ai and Moonshot released highly capable open-source models, sharpening the question of what open vs. closed AI strategies mean for U.S.-China leadership in the field.

@SammSacks and @kevinsxu join Graham Webster to break down why the controls were placed, why Chinese labs are leaning into open source, and what a recent AI-driven cybersecurity incident reveals about where the real risks lie.

Watch: https://t.co/ZFkHTVpVhA

#AI #USChinaRelations #ExportControls

[National Committee on U.S.-China Relations @NCUSCR]

Yesterday, the National Committee hosted a conversation with Cameron Johnson, senior partner at Tidalwave Solutions, on the state of China's economy, manufacturing, and supply chains.

Johnson discussed the business climate in China, the effects on global supply chains, and where U.S.-China relations stand between the May Trump-Xi summit in Beijing and this fall's upcoming convenings.

His key takeaway: companies that skip comprehensive supply chain mapping do not fully grasp their risk exposure, a gap that matters even more in today's geopolitical climate.