The U.S.'s relationship with China remains one of its most consequential and contested. Competition between the two countries continues to intensify across sectors. Trade frictions persist despite ongoing talks, while export controls and supply chain pressures, particularly around critical minerals, are raising concerns about economic decoupling. At the same time, security flashpoints such as Taiwan and overlapping geopolitical tensions, including sanctions tied to Iran-related trade, underscore how regional and global issues are increasingly intertwined with U.S.–China competition. 

On May 27, at 2 pm PT, the Pacific Council invites you to dial in for a discussion of what lies ahead for the bilateral relationship, following President Trump's trip to China, scheduled for May 14-15. The visit, the first one in almost 9 years, signals a desire to manage tensions, even as distrust continues to shape policy on both sides. Members will hear from Francisco Bencosme, Director of the Government Affairs team at the U.S.-China Business Council, Natalia Cote-Muñoz, Managing Partner and CEO of Vantage Point Strategies, Dr. Jeff Wasserstrom, Chancellor's Professor of History at UC Irvine, and Anka Lee, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Council Member.

Why it's important:

• Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Taiwan is the central and most dangerous issue in the bilateral relationship, urging the U.S. to make the “right choices.”
• According to U.S. government assessments, Beijing is significantly expanding and modernizing its nuclear arsenal, moving beyond a minimal deterrent toward a more robust and flexible force posture, raising concerns in Washington about strategic stability. 
• The Chinese Ministry of Commerce warned that the United States was threatening the "hard-won stability" in their trade relations after the national telecoms agency effectively banned smartphones tested in Chinese laboratories from the American market.

To register for this webinar, visit the Zoom Registration Page.

Guest Speaker

Francisco Bencosme is a director on the government affairs team at the US-China Business Council, where he helps more than 200 American companies navigate US-China issues. He was formerly the China policy lead for the US Agency for International Development, serving as principal advisor to the USAID administrator on issues relating to China and Taiwan. Prior to joining USAID, he was deputy to the Special Presidential Envoy for Compact of Free Association negotiations, helping conclude three 20-year compact agreements with Pacific Island nations. He concurrently served as senior advisor to Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Dan Kritenbrink. Before joining the Biden-Harris administration, he was a senior policy advisor at the Open Society Foundations covering Asia and Latin America, and led the US human rights policy and advocacy program toward the Asia-Pacific at Amnesty International USA. He previously served as a professional staff member on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 

He is a Council on Foreign Relations term member, a Truman Security Fellow, and a Penn Kemble Fellow. He received his master’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University and his bachelor’s degree from Wake Forest University.

Guest Speaker

Natalia Cote-Muñoz is the Managing Partner and CEO of Vantage Point Strategies, a geopolitical risk and responsible AI advisory firm. She served in the Biden-Harris administration as Acting Deputy Special Representative for City and State Diplomacy in the State Department's Subnational Diplomacy Unit and in the Secretary's Office of Policy Planning. Prior to government service, Cote-Muñoz conducted research at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Inter-American Dialogue, and the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center. She also taught China's future diplomats at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing. She publishes Artificial Inquiry, a weekly newsletter on AI governance and geopolitics. Cote-Muñoz holds an MPP from Harvard Kennedy School and a BA in political science from Swarthmore College. She is fluent in English, Spanish, French, and Mandarin.

Guest Speaker

Dr. Jeff Wasserstrom was born in California and educated largely in the state, getting a B.A. from UC Santa Cruz and a PhD from Berkeley, while also earning a Master's from Harvard and spending a year apiece studying at the University of London, as an undergrad, and Fudan University in Shanghai, as a doctoral student. He returned to California to join UCI's History Department in 2006. Before that, Dr. Wasserstrom spent two years teaching at the University of Kentucky and fifteen years at Indiana University in Bloomington, where, in addition to offering courses, he spent a year as the Acting Editor of the Bloomington-based American Historical Review and served for three years as the Director of IU's East Asian Studies Center. From 2008 to 2018, Dr. Wasserstrom was editor of the Journal of Asian Studies at UCI.

Moderator

Anka Lee is a national security expert with over two decades of experience leading large teams in the U.S. government, California state government, and in the private sector. Anka is based in Los Angeles and works closely with West Coast clients to navigate geopolitical challenges, mitigate risks, and find opportunities abroad – especially in the Asia Pacific. In between his time in public service in both Sacramento and Washington, DC, Anka was a global policy manager at WhatsApp, a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and an Asia-based journalist.

In Sacramento, he served as California State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon’s international policy director, where he created new bilateral initiatives with the governments of Mexico, Canada, Japan, and Germany, empowering state elected officials to address shared policy challenges with foreign counterparts — from climate to cross-border water pollution to data privacy. Earlier in his career, Anka was a news producer at KTVU-TV Fox 2 in the San Francisco Bay Area, covering national, state, and local campaigns. He also served as a legislative aide to State Senators Sheila Kuehl and Carole Migden. While in high school, he led a four-year campaign that convinced voters to approve a $40 million bond to renovate public schools across the West Contra Costa Unified School District.

In Washington, his senior leadership roles included Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia at the Pentagon, where he advanced bilateral defense relations with major allies and partners in the region and pursued collective action to meet growing security challenges in the Indo-Pacific. Prior to that, as USAID Deputy Assistant Administrator for multilateral affairs, he rallied like-minded countries to surge financial support for pressing global issues — from addressing Ukraine’s security needs to alleviating hunger to coordinating responses to China’s corrosive development practices globally. 

He has written for and appeared on The Atlantic, Bloomberg, The Diplomat, Just Security, Foreign Policy, NBC, Newsweek, POLITICO, Time, and San Francisco Chronicle. Born in Hong Kong, raised in California, and a first-generation college graduate, Anka received his B.A. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and M.A. in East Asian studies from Harvard University. He also did graduate studies at the California State University, Sacramento, as part of the California Senate Fellows Program. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the Wilson Center and an External Senior Advisor at the Special Competitive Studies Project.

 

To register for this webinar, visit the Zoom Registration Page.