Henry Huiyao Wang on building mechanisms for managed interdependence

CCG | May 13 , 2026

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Below is the latest comment by Henry Huiyao Wang, Founder of the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), on U.S. President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to China.

Build mechanisms for managed interdependence

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As President Donald Trump visits China, much attention will focus on what immediate deals and dialogue might emerge: from possible cooperation on urgent geopolitical crises from Ukraine to the Middle East, or on bartering over tariffs, aircraft, and agricultural goods. While these questions matter, the greater significance of the visit is how the United States and China are moving, however unevenly, toward a new normal of managed coexistence between deeply interdependent peers.

Trump’s visit is an opportunity to give that reality form — new mechanisms from trade and investment to security and crisis-management that stabilize competition while creating room for cooperation on global challenges.

For years, the bilateral relationship has been framed through the language of decoupling, de-risking, and strategic rivalry. Yet the facts of interdependence have proved more durable than the rhetoric. International trade has stubbornly held on and major American companies continue to see China as an indispensable market, manufacturing ecosystem, and source of growth. China, for its part, remains deeply embedded in global supply chains and has shown that it can withstand pressure and retaliate when necessary. Neither side can coerce the other into submission. Recent exchanges in the United States suggest that this resilience of interdependence is beginning to register not only in markets, but also in policy thinking.

In April 2026, we conducted ten days of intensive field research in the United States. Across these closed-door exchanges and often candid debates, and beyond the loudest hawkish rhetoric, important voices in American political, business, and policy circles are quietly exploring a more pragmatic, problem-solving approach to China. The current administration’s tendency to place economic interests above ideological confrontation has, objectively, opened a rare window for practical engagement. Seizing this moment to rethink the rules of trade, investment, and strategic risk management.

This does not mean a flawless return to the old era of engagement, as if disputes over technology, industrial policy, security, and geopolitics had vanished. Competition will still remain a central feature of the relationship. But we do not have to lurch from tariff shock to sanction cycle to diplomatic crisis anymore. We stand before an opportunity to build a more realistic framework of managed interdependence.

That should begin with economics. If the United States and China are serious about stabilizing relations, they should consider establishing a bilateral trade board and a bilateral investment board. A trade board could identify areas of mutually beneficial exchange, clarify priorities for imports and exports, and prevent recurring disputes from escalating unnecessarily. China can buy more non-sensitive American goods, including agricultural products, energy, aerospace products, and other high-quality exports. The United States, meanwhile, should recognize that trade with China is not a one-sided loss. American consumers gain affordable products, American farmers and manufacturers gain customers, and the United States retains major strengths in services, finance, technology, and advanced industry which more than balance out the economic relationship.

An investment board is equally necessary. Trump has repeatedly said that he welcomes Chinese investment in the United States when it creates American jobs. That instinct is sensible. If a Chinese company invests in American factories, employs American workers, and complies with U.S. law, such investment should not be rejected. At the same time, Washington will continue to have national security concerns in certain sectors. The problem is that “national security” has become an elastic and vague category. A standing bilateral mechanism could help clarify what forms of investment are welcome, what sectors require special scrutiny, and how both sides can avoid turning every commercial question into a confrontation.

These mechanisms would matter especially now, as both countries have reason to seek a degree of stability amid global energy market upheavals, Hormuz strait tensions, and geopolitical headwinds.

The same logic applies beyond trade and investment. My own experience in exchanges in Washington led me to witness a genuine interest in reopening or expanding dialogue channels, including military and defense communication.

Over the years, head-of-state diplomacy has anchored China-U.S. relations, serving as a stabilizing force amid shifting global currents. This meeting is an opportunity to reaffirm that role and to encourage more routine channels to create strategic stability, enable crisis prevention, and achieve goals such as controlling fentanyl and its precursor chemicals, and regulating emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. AI in particular is now too consequential to be excluded from top-level discussion. The two countries need not agree on everything to recognize that a world in which the largest technological powers do not talk about AI risks is an unsafe one and that avoiding an AI arms race should be at the top of any agenda.

People-to-people ties should also be part of any stabilization agenda. Chinese students should be able to study in the United States without feeling that their presence is treated as inherently suspect. Educational exchanges have long served as a stabilizing force in bilateral relations and should not become collateral damage of political distrust. Meanwhile, China could also consider extending visas to students and give visa-free access to American visitors, as it has done for every other G7 economy, to encourage renewed social and commercial exchange.

Still, no issue will test the seriousness of this search for stability more than Taiwan. It remains among the most sensitive questions in China-U.S. relations and the one most capable of producing miscalculation. Washington has long stated that it does not support Taiwan independence. In the present atmosphere, that position should be reaffirmed clearly and consistently. Recent exchanges across the Taiwan Strait, including engagement between the Kuomintang and the mainland, demonstrate that a desire for peace and stability remains robust, and the U.S. should support cross-strait dialogue rather than feeding the illusion that confrontation is inevitable.

Further, the need for managed interdependence is also global. The Middle East remains in turmoil, with conflict involving Iran and disruption around the Strait of Hormuz threatening energy security far beyond the region. Asian economies and much of the Global South are especially exposed. China, as a leading trade partner of both Iran and Gulf countries, has a constructive role to play in supporting de-escalation. The United States and China will not see every crisis in identical terms, whether in the Middle East or in Ukraine. But the world is safer when they can communicate, coordinate where possible, and avoid allowing bilateral rivalry to foreclose cooperation on matters of war and peace.

With a greater measure of stability in hand, it may also be time to revisit the reciprocal 2020 closures of China’s consulate general in Houston and the U.S. consulate general in Chengdu — a modest but meaningful step toward restoring the diplomatic infrastructure of a more functional relationship.

The coming summit may or may not produce dramatic breakthroughs. It need not. Its deeper value would be to signal that both sides are prepared to move, however cautiously, from unmanaged rivalry toward strategic stability. The age of decoupling is ending. Our urgent task now is to build the mechanisms of managed interdependence before a lack of structure turns competition into permanent instability.