In rare visit to China, U.S. lawmakers urge better communication amid tensions

BEIJING — Washington and Beijing will have to communicate better if they are to resolve their various disagreements — and if they don’t talk, it could be “dangerous,” a U.S. lawmaker said Tuesday during a rare congressional visit to China

BEIJING — Washington and Beijing will have to communicate better if they are to resolve their various disagreements — and if they don’t talk, it could be “dangerous,” a U.S. lawmaker said Tuesday during a rare congressional visit to China.

This is the first delegation of House lawmakers to visit China since 2019; a group of U.S. senators visited Beijing in 2023. Their trip comes amid tensions between the United States and China over trade, technology and wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the leader of the bipartisan delegation, said that they held “robust and very helpful” meetings with Chinese officials and that the objective of the trip was to reopen lines of communication between “the two most powerful countries in the world.”

“Our relationship is going to be the most consequential relationship in terms of what the world is going to be like for decades to come,” Smith told reporters at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. “It is really important that we work to strengthen that relationship and better understand each other.”

The military relationship between the United States and China is of particular concern, he said.