Beijing – Washington and Beijing will have to communicate better if they are going to resolve their various disagreements, and if they do not speak, it could be “dangerous,” said an American legislator on Tuesday during a rare visit from Congress to China.
This is the first delegation of legislators of the House of Representatives in visiting China since 2019; A group of American senators visited Beijing in 2023. Their trip occurs amid tensions between the United States and China about commerce, technology and wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.
The representative Adam Smith, D-Wash., The leader of the bipartisan delegation, said they had “robust and very useful” meetings with Chinese officials and that the goal of the trip was to reopen lines of communication between “the two most powerful countries in the world.”
“Our relationship will be the most consistent relationship in terms of how the world will be in the coming decades,” Smith told journalists from the United States Embassy in Beijing. “It is really important that we work to strengthen that relationship and understand each other better.”
The military relationship between the United States and China is of particular concern, he said.
The Delegation of Congress arrived weeks after Beijing showed its military power and its advanced armament in a highly choreographed parade.
“China is the fastest army and the fastest nuclear energy in the world. The United States has the largest army in the world and the largest nuclear arsenal,” said Smith. “It is dangerous for us not to have regular communications about our abilities and intentions.”
President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke on Friday on their first phone call since June. Trump said they agreed during the call to meet outside October 31 to November. 1 APEC Summit in South Korea and that it would visit China at the beginning of next year.
David Perdue, the new United States ambassador to China, said the two leaders had a “great decision” and were “waiting to meet.”
“I would say that the relationship between President XI and President Trump is actually very good and very encouraging at this time,” he said.
The other members of the delegation are representatives Michael Baumgartner, R-Wash.; RO Khanna, D-Calif.; and Chrissy Haulahan, D-PA. They are in China until Thursday.
After they arrived on Sunday, the legislators met with Prime Minister Li Qiang, official number 2 of China. On Monday, they met with the Vice Prime Minister He Lifeng, who has led the Chinese side in commercial negotiations with the United States, and the Minister of Defense Dong Jun.
In its meeting with He, the delegation discussed conversations with China, which explains the largest American commercial deficit, and urged Beijing to “help stop the flow of fentanyl to the United States and reduce non -tariff barriers to US companies who seek to do business in China,” according to a reading of the Congress.
The delegation also discussed the future of the Video Tiktok application, which faces a ban in the United States unless its Chinese parent company sells their US assets to US owners, as well as the question of critical minerals and export controls that Beijing has tried to impose on them, since they take advantage of their almost monopoly in the industry.
In their meeting with Dong, legislators emphasized the importance of greater communication between US and Chinese military to avoid calculation error and conflict.
Communications between the military were suspended as of August 2022 after the representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, the president of the House of Representatives at that time, angry at Beijing when visiting Taiwan, an autonomous island democracy that China claims as its territory. They were restored in November 2023 after a meeting in the United States between XI and President Joe Biden.
The legislators who visited China said that the US military presence in the Pacific Asia “should not be interpreted as a threat to China”, who sought a peaceful resolution to the question of Taiwan and that the conflict between the United States and China “should not be inevitable.”
Speaking before his meeting, Dong said the visit “shows a good phase to strengthen the communications of China-United States, and I think it’s right.”
Janis Mackey Frayer reported Beijing and Jennifer Jett by Hong Kong.
