This week, for the first time since 2019, lawmakers from the U.S. House of Representatives visited China. A delegation led by Rep. Adam Smith, Democratic ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, met with China’s No. 2 official Li Qiang as well as several leading ministers.
Smith’s aims – restoring bilateral “dialogue and communication” – are simple. But they mark an opportunity to escape from the animating framework of China policy in Washington today: quarantinism, or the assumption that contact with China and its ruling party is dangerous, unhelpful, and should be minimized where economically possible.
U.S. officials – federal or state – rarely visit China today outside of high-stakes bilateral negotiations. The lack of exposure reinforces naïve dismissals of China’s homegrown economic dynamism. And it cuts U.S. officials off from policy laboratories that can inspire solutions to their economic and environmental challenges. With proper guardrails, exchanges can show officials both what lessons to take from China and how to take China on.
Government-sponsored exchanges were among the earliest fronts for China-U.S. decoupling starting in the late 2010s. Congressional delegations to China declined during Trump’s first term before disappearing amidst China’s COVID-19 lockdown. But Trump’s team formalized that shift by permanently canceling flagship exchanges for congressional staff and other policy leaders. Subnational (city/state/province) exchanges that resumed post-COVID faced aggressive pushback on Capitol Hill and got only tepid backing from the Biden administration. No congressional delegation has visited China since a bipartisan Senate group in mid-2023.
Congress’ drought is a dereliction of duty. China is the United States’ greatest rival and requires a meaningful strategy to manage. Visiting China for dialogue does not mean capitulating to Beijing. It means gathering on-the-ground insights to inform smarter strategy.
But the drought in exchange reflects a more subtle error: the assumption that the “China challenge” is rooted partly in how the United States manages China’s access to Americans. This belief has deep roots. Advocates of China-U.S. engagement once hoped that expanding economic and people-to-people ties would foster liberal currents in Chinese society that would bind the country to the international order the U.S. oversaw. Quarantinists rose by rejecting “engagement” and arguing that China fuels itself by exploiting the United States openness: China steals U.S. innovation and jobs through industrial espionage and predatory trade policies, while it leverages the United States’ open society to cultivate naïve globalists as mouthpieces for its propaganda.
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) became the face of this agenda in Washington. Networks of lobbyists have spread it at the state level. In the first three months of 2025, Congress considered 160 bills on China. State houses had considered more than 400, on topics from Chinese land ownership and corporate investment to university partnerships and “transnational repression.”
Quarantinists’ diagnoses are necessary and often sound. China does much of what they say, though in much more chaotic and ad hoc ways than the CCP-as-puppetmaster portrait would suggest. But if engagers hoped to control China by binding it to the United States, quarantinists believe they can subdue Beijing by severing China from the U.S. That prescription is – whether the U.S. likes it or not – outdated.
China today competes and wins across an increasing array of frontier sectors, from cleantech and industrial automation to drones and artificial intelligence. Its manufacturing prowess is fueled by strengths beyond trickery and theft: structural advantages like a massive domestic market, as well as an industrial policy system that breeds winners through ferocious competition. The United States remains an enormous and high-value export market. But its superior position in technologies and value chains – the position that made access to the U.S. so important for China – is eroding.
Visiting China can help U.S. politicians see this change – in the electric vehicles that swarm its streets, the delivery robots that glide through its subways, and the bullet trains that crisscross its countryside. As China’s indigenous capabilities grow, moreover, the U.S. should start seeing China as a source of policy lessons, not just a recipient.
Looking to better link land-use planning and economic development? China’s globally dominant manufacturing sector rests in part on successful strategies for fostering industrial clusters.
Wondering about the role of antitrust enforcement in economic growth? Competition has powered innovation in China even in SOE-dominated sectors like high-speed rail.
Trying to manage growing flood risks in an American city? China’s “sponge city” framework maps neatly onto U.S. “green infrastructure” strategies that can save cities 15-80 percent in capital costs while boosting green space and local water and air quality.
Seeing these opportunities requires federal, state, and local officials to once again visit China.
Yes, these visits bring risks. That is what quarantinists fixate upon, and they are right to worry. Exchanges can absolutely serve as conduits for CCP influence and industrial espionage. The space of open dialogue within China, moreover, has shrunk substantially in the last 15 years. This shift reflects the CCP’s own deep-rooted tendency toward quarantinism: a paranoid distrust of “foreign influences” as politically subversive and economically exploitative.
But the benefits of U.S. officials visiting China demand a more creative response than simply not going. Congressional delegations can create channels for dialogue on hard issues of national security and economic competition. Subnational delegations on less sensitive areas like urban planning and environmental resilience can expose U.S. cities and states to China’s local governments, often the national frontrunners in policy experimentation.
Meanwhile, proactive precautions can manage the risks these exchanges bring. On cybersecurity, China hacks relentlessly; burner devices are a must. As for influence cultivation, the State Department is a powerful tool to educate delegates about risks of manipulation – especially local officials with less experience operating abroad.
Six years is far too long between House delegations to China – but, in this quarantinist moment, it is unsurprising. Armchair study has the United States underestimating its biggest challenger and neglecting the policy lessons China can provide. Restarting exchanges can set U.S. policy on a smarter and more effective footing.