By ANU Editorial Board

First the good news — Washington and Beijing are talking again. In 2023, both capitals came to accept the reality that the deterioration of relations that had carried over from the Trump years through much of the first Biden term was unsustainable.

At the start of 2024 there’s a sense that, in the short run, bilateral relations are more functional than a year earlier. But those with an eye on the structural problems afflicting the relationship will still recognise that the United States’ Asia policy is increasingly guided by competition with China. Asia will have to take the initiative to build a regional system in which China has a — but not the — leadership position, and to do so without the expectation of a constructive US role for some years.

In this week’s lead article, Ryan Hass argues that 2023 was a ‘strong year for US foreign policy in Asia’ marked by an arrest in the downward spiral of US–China relations, as well as the deepening and broadening of US ties with allies and those charting a path between US–China competition in Asia.

As Hass writes, ‘the United States found firmer footing in its relations with China’ over the year. ‘After a tumultuous first half of 2023, Washington and Beijing reopened diplomatic channels and coordinated productive leader-level engagement’, with the Biden–Xi meeting at the G20 in 2022 being followed up with the bilateral face-to-face........

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