U.S. Engagement With China in 3 Charts

When Xi Jinping visited San Francisco in November, it was the Chinese president’s first U.S. trip in six years. While the COVID-19 pandemic played its part in making travel difficult for some years, the long delay between visits is a symbol of the sharp reduction in U.S.-China engagement.

But more than presidential travel, perhaps a better gauge to examine diplomacy between Washington and Beijing over the last few decades is how soon into their terms U.S. secretaries of state turned their attention to China.

As the above graph shows, Antony Blinken took 873 days before he made his first visit to China as secretary of state. Contrast that with Hillary Clinton, who took off for China just 30 days into joining the Obama administration—the shortest amount of time between starting office and visiting Beijing in the last half-century.

Various factors delayed Blinken’s singular China visit—Beijing’s zero-COVID policy being but one of them. The discovery of a Chinese spy balloon over the continental United States in late January postponed Blinken’s first planned summit.

Another way of looking at the rise and fall of U.S. engagement with China is through the number of trips taken by America’s top diplomat.

“We simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside of the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates, and threaten its neighbors,” wrote soon-to-be U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1967, beginning Washington’s opening up to Beijing. Under Nixon, only two trips were eventually possible, his time in office shortened by his 1974 resignation.

It wasn’t until President Bill Clinton’s second term that high-level delegations to China became a regular occurrence. Between 1992 and 1996, Clinton sent Madeleine Albright to China six times—at the time, the most in history. Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice made a combined 11 visits to China under President George W. Bush, accelerating the trend.

Engagement with China reached a peak under the Obama administration: 16 visits by a secretary of state in eight years, with John Kerry making nine of them, and Hillary Clinton seven.

In hindsight, the 2008 financial crisis may have served as a turning point. “China thought, ‘OK, America is in decline; it’s our time to rise,’” said Orville Schell, director of the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations. “‘We don’t need to make compromises. We don’t need to think about diplomacy. We’re just going to be bellicose, aggressive, and grab what we want, whether it’s the South China Sea, the Senkaku Islands, Hong Kong, Taiwan—it’s ours.’” That, Schell said, was the “fatal beginning of the end,” forcing Washington to push a more aggressive Chinese engagement policy.

And then came U.S. President Donald Trump. Around a year into assuming office, he declared a trade war on China. In turn, secretary of state trips to the mainland declined to a modest five: three under Rex Tillerson and two under Mike Pompeo.

China experts believe low levels of engagement will continue, especially as U.S. presidential candidates criticize China to secure votes, U.S. military drills increase in the Indo-Pacific, and Taiwan braces for its own election cycle in January 2024 amid growing Chinese animosity toward the island.

“Engagement is dead, deader than a doornail,” Schell said. “And it’s not coming back—not a snowball’s chance in hell.”