U.S. lawmakers head to a gathering with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sept. 21, 2025.
Mahesh Kumar A. | Afp | Getty Images
A bunch of U.S. lawmakers on a rare visit to Beijing advised China’s No.2 chief, Premier Li Qiang, that the world’s two largest economies want to step up engagement and “break the ice” as each superpowers made additional inroads into stabilising ties.
The visit on Sunday was the primary House of Representatives delegation to visit China since 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic ended formal House visits in 2020, and relations quickly deteriorated due to disagreement over the origins of the coronavirus that had unfold all around the world.
The journey by the bipartisan delegation, introduced this month, follows a name on Friday between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping as each nations search a course out of a interval of strained ties exacerbated by commerce tensions, U.S. restrictions over semiconductor chips, the ownership of TikTok, Chinese actions within the South China Sea, and issues associated to Taiwan, which Beijing claims as a part of its territory.
This “ice-breaking” journey will additional bilateral ties, Premier Li advised the lawmakers, in accordance to a pool report organised by the U.S. embassy in China.
The delegation is led by Democratic U.S. Representative Adam Smith. He is a former chair of and present prime Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, which oversees the U.S. Defense Department and armed forces.
“We can both acknowledge that both China and the U.S. have work to do to strengthen that relationship, which should not be, what, seven, six years between visits from the U.S. House of Representatives,” Smith advised Premier Li.
“We need more of those types of exchanges, and we are hoping, to your words, that this will break the ice and we will begin to have more of these types of exchanges.”
In the interim years between the conferences, when Covid-hit China largely shut its borders to the skin world, U.S. lawmakers had targeted their visits elsewhere.
Trips by U.S. lawmakers included visits to democratically-governed Taiwan, which Beijing claims as a part of its territory and regards as crucial and delicate situation in its relations with the United States.
In 2022, then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a delegation of Democratic members of the House to Taiwan as a part of a wider Asia tour. The journey infuriated China, which tells different nations to keep away from official engagements with Taiwan, and triggered large Chinese army workouts in waters and airspace across the island.
A yr later, U.S. lawmakers angered Beijing once more when Michael McCaul, then chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, visited Taiwan. McCaul, who was later sanctioned by China, pledged to assist present coaching for Taiwan’s armed forces and velocity up the supply of weapons.