“Below the water line, there was actually a much more constructive engagement, as evidenced by [US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent] and some of the Chinese leaders in their five meetings during the year,” Ford said. “It sets the stage for a much more positive and stable relationship between the US and China in the next year.”
He said the China-US relationship was in “a cyclical upswing”, despite some longer-term challenges related to national security, competition and technology.
After talks on Thursday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea, Chinese President Xi Jinping and US counterpart Donald Trump teased out some relief on a host of bilateral trade irritants, followed by Bessent’s announcement that China had approved the transfer agreement for short video app TikTok.
