Forum pins hope on younger generation to grow US-China relations

A group of experienced professional women who have made careers out of growing US-China relations gathered in Atlanta, Georgia on Friday (Jan 30) to take stock of this important yet complex relationship's history, present challenges and outlook for the future.

The 2026 Jimmy Carter Forum on US-China Relations, which opened on Thursday with a concert and keynote address by Sarah Beran, partner at Macro Advisory Partners and a former senior diplomat, was dedicated to women's contributions and perspectives with an array of all-female speakers.

According to conference organizer Yawei Liu, senior adviser on China at The Carter Center and an adjunct professor at Emory University, this conference series, held every two years, was started in 2012 in Beijing by former president Jimmy Carter.

Beran most recently served as deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Beijing and as senior director for China and Taiwan affairs on the White House National Security Council before she retired from a 23-year career in the US Foreign Service.

She examined the ups and downs in the relationship over the previous decades, noting that the relationship has demonstrated notable resilience over nearly a decade of strategic competition but remains on a structural decline with no clear endpoint. Nevertheless, both sides have an interest in preventing competition from spiraling out of control.

"The relationship has changed, the two countries are different, but we need to manage this competition and find a path forward," Beran said. "Leaders and diplomats on both sides will need flexible, patient approaches to grapple with this continued transition from the previous era of engagement through strategic competition to whatever awaits us on the other side."

More than a dozen panelists shared their US-China experiences and examined multiple issues surrounding the relationship.

Jan Berris, vice-president at National Committee on US-China Relations, has been at the forefront of building the bilateral relations since her involvement with ping pong diplomacy in 1971. As an active participant for 55 years, she helped the relationship to develop and blossom from a "void and formless era". She lamented the current period as "the worst time in the relationship".

Other younger panelists had all experienced the "golden age" of US-China relations and shared their wonderful time spent in China. Elizabeth Knup, a China analysis fellow at The Asia Society, worked as American director of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center from 1998 to 2001; Caroline Pan, vice-chair at the 1990 Institute, was in China for major technology companies including Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Honeywell from 2005 to 2018; Rosie Levine, executive director at US-China Education Trust, spent her childhood in Beijing from ages four to nine, and completed her master's degree in Chinese studies at the Yenching Academy of Peking University between 2014 and 2018.

There is no going back to "the golden age" of relations, said the panelists, and people-to-people exchanges face many challenges from policies to funding. Yet the relations remain impactful for the whole world, said the panelists.

Knup emphasized the need to move beyond nostalgia for a past "golden age" and focus on writing new stories for the relationship. "I'm interested in a transitional period."

The panelists also emphasized the need to empower the younger generation to get curious and involved in US-China relations.

There are some hopeful signs. Levine said that many young people have seen short videos about life in China on Instagram or TikTok that "give them a lot of curiosity about this country" and realized it's quite different from what "they see on the headline news".

"I do think that there's a growing interest among young people in China," said Levine. She took American young people's curiosity around the city of Chongqing as an example.

"It's kind of taken off as an internet icon of an interesting place that inverts some people's stereotypes or perceived notions about what a Chinese city looks like," she said.

In fact, a few young people attended the conference, including Mackenzie Miller, program manager of The Penn Project on the Future of US-China Relations, a program that was established in 2020.

"I was just in Taiwan, and I was just in China with lots of students, American students, who are studying there," Miller said. "My perspective is that there are people there doing the work. Maybe there's less than before, but the people that are there are very engaged and very interested in US-China relations."

Emily Conrad, a PhD candidate for international studies at Fudan University, said she attended The Carter Center's Emerging Voices for US-China Cooperation program two years ago.

"The topic is really timely and very applicable to me as I'm from the US, my husband is Chinese, and we are building, literally, a US-China family together in Beijing," said Conrad, who is originally from South Carolina.

Conrad went to China in 2015 for her master's degree at Yenching Academy at Peking University and subsequently worked as a journalist there. Later she began to pursue a PhD at Fudan that she will soon complete in June.

With 10 years in China, Conrad witnessed the decline of American students in China, but she's optimistic.

"I think we have a lack of understanding," she said of the declining number. "But at the same time, I think that there are reasons to be optimistic because a lot of Americans went on The Red Note — xiaohongshu — for the first time," said Conrad.

To her, the increased interactions, especially among young people, is "a positive development" and "there are reasons to think that there will be increased cultural connections in the digital age."

Noah Statton, a recent college graduate working in tech, said he just came back from an 11-month stay in China participating in a Chinese language program at Zhejiang University. He attended the conference out of curiosity about people's thoughts on US-China relations.

"I have learned that there is still some optimism on the outlook of US-China relations despite the current state of affairs. There are many advocates for better relations, and the US public is not completely opposed to improving relations, according to survey results. Also, a lot of the worsening in relations can be attributed to the views of American politicians and not to do with the American public," Statton said.