Description

The relationship between the U.S. and China has taken a nosedive to its lowest point in decades, in large part as a result of the unprecedented global pandemic. Decoupling, on both economic and technological fronts, and the waging of a new cold war are no longer fringe ideas but, to some at least, a description of reality or expectation. The upcoming presidential election, where China-bashing is touted as a bipartisan strategy, further complicates things. 
Organized bilateral channels, both official and unofficial ones, have largely gone dormant. One of the few Track II dialogues that is still active, and the only one involving retired senior Chinese and American military participants, is the dialogue organized by Seton Hall University, in collaboration with Nanjing University’s China Center for Collaborative Studies of the South China Sea, with support from the Asia Program. An in-person meeting scheduled for April this year has been postponed to the end of 2020 because of the pandemic. However, the project’s co-directors, Zheng Wang, China scholar and director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Seton Hall, and Zhu Feng, director of the Nanjing Center, felt that as the coronavirus outbreak brought out the worst in diplomats, politicians and media figures on both sides, there was an urgent need for communication between policy communities in the two countries, and that such conversations, unlike sensitive discussions involving military officials, could be conducted via Zoom calls. 
Wang and Zhu recruited Robert Daly, Director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States. The three formed a team and, since April, have piloted a series of Zoom dialogues involving scholars and former government officials from each side on a variety of topics. The attached proposal has a list of participants representing a range of viewpoints; the three organizers choose the theme for each session and invite appropriate speakers based on topical events. Both Helena and I have observed several sessions, held every second Thursday from 8:30-10:00pm EDT. It is the only regular, bi-weekly Track II Zoom dialogue on US-China relations that we know of, and I confirmed this with a number of experts. Zhu, the Nanjing Center director, is a special advisor to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He shared that he has briefed the Ministry on the discussions, which the Ministry values.
We recommend this as an urgent needs grant to keep channels of communication open at a time when official diplomacy is strained to non-existent.  Funding would help the PIs continue the Zoom dialogues until at least the end of September, after which they plan to summarize key take aways and proposals for improving the relationship in a series of essays and reports to inform the policymakers and publics in both countries and elsewhere. They also hold out the possibility of continuing the dialogues for a longer period. The grant would cover staff costs, publication, Zoom usage fees and supplies. We have rounded up our recommendation to $50,000 to cover additional translation costs. The recommended amount would be drawn from the Asia Program’s 2020 allocation.