The U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, expressed cautious optimism about the state of relations between the two countries during a webinar hosted Thursday by the East-West Center in Manoa.

“I think 2023, especially the second half of 2023, led to a relatively more stable relationship between our government in the United States and the government of the People’s Republic of China,” Burns said.

In recent years the relationship between the two countries has deteriorated sharply.

In summer 2022, U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi — who was then speaker of the House — made a trip to Taiwan to meet with officials, prompting China to cut off all military communications and suspend climate talks with the United States. Then in February 2023 a large balloon from China — which U.S. officials say was a spy balloon — made it way across the mainland before the Air Force sent fighters to shoot it down off the coast of the Carolinas.

“I think both sides agreed by last spring and early summer that we really needed better connectivity,” Burns said. “We need Cabinet channels of communication because we have very serious differences and we’re competitors on many, many issues.”

Since then there have been several top visits by officials, and in October a bipartisan U.S. congressional delegation visited China for the first time in four years. In November, President Joe Biden met face to face with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during the 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco.

Burns said the meeting between the two leaders “didn’t resolve many of the outstanding differences on major issues. But what it did was, it confirmed the judgment of both countries that as we are competitors, it’s very important that we have constant communications.”

The two agreed to restore military dialogue, cooperate on tackling fentanyl production and smuggling, and other cooperation, which Burns said have seen some limited gains since then.

“COVID pulled us apart, and so we have far fewer tourists and business people and students traveling in each other’s countries,” Burns said. He noted that was “particularly problematic” on educational exchanges.

While there are still as many as 292,000 Chinese students studying in the United States, most of the American students went home during COVID-19. Eight years ago there were 15,000 American students in China, but over the pandemic that plummeted to just 350. Burns said that as of this year it has increased again to about 800, though tourism between the two countries has still declined sharply.

“You do want people to be connected in a relationship between the two largest economies in the world,” Burns said. “People are really the foundation of any kind of diplomatic relationship, and so we’re working hard on both sides to try to increase the number of flights between the two countries.”

Leaders from the two countries also have agreed to cooperate on climate change and global health — though the latter is contentious due to debate over the origin of COVID-19 — which was first documented in Wuhan, China — and how it spread. Burns said there are still profound differences as the two countries compete for power and influence.

“We have profound differences with the Communist Party of China, with the People’s Republic government, about human freedom and human rights,” Burns said. “I think in many ways it’s the weightiest part of this relationship. But I want to stress again, we’ve been very clear that as we compete with China, we will do so without conflict and, obviously, peacefully.”

However, over the past year tensions have ratcheted up in the South China Sea — a critical waterway that more than a third of all international trade moves through. China claims the whole region as its own, but in 2016 an international court ruled in the Philippines’ favor and declared that China’s territorial claims had “no legal basis.”

Chinese ships have since attacked and harassed Filipino vessels and maritime workers. In November on his way back to Manila from APEC, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. stopped in Honolulu and during a speech in Waikiki told an audience, “Unfortunately, I cannot report that the situation is improving. The situation has become more dire than it was before.”

“All the rest of the world understands that and recognizes that this is sovereign Filipino territory, but China refuses to agree and ignores the International Court of Justice ruling,” Burns said. “We want to see, obviously, peace prevail. And we want to see China cease and desist from its provocative actions. And you’ve seen a very strong American support for the Philippines based on our mutual defense treaty of 1951, and we hope very much that this will be a quieter next few months, but we’ve been very decisive and very clear about our support for the Philippines.”

While trade between the U.S. and China remains robust, Washington and Beijing also have become more suspicious with each other when it comes to trading certain technologies. Burns said, “It will be technology developments, whether it’s artificial intelligence and machine learning in quantum sciences, in biotech­nology, that will not only change the global economy and our life in terms of the commercial technologies, but many of these technologies will lead to new military technologies that will define the balance of power in the future.”

But he said despite competition, it’s vital that Chinese and American people continue to talk and travel between their two countries.

“If it’s true, and I know it is, that we’re going to have a highly challenging, often difficult competitive relationship between China and the United States, as that proceeds we’ve got to make sure that our people are connected,” Burns said. “It’s to the strategic advantage of the United States that … the next generation of Americans understands China.”