Some people are saying, 'Well, we're so competitive with China, we should end the economic relationship'. Well, the consequence of that would be 750,… - R. Nicholas Burns

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Some people are saying, 'Well, we're so competitive with China, we should end the economic relationship'. Well, the consequence of that would be 750,000 American families wouldn't be able to put dinner on the table.

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About R. Nicholas Burns

Robert Nicholas Burns (born January 28, 1956) is an American diplomat and academic who has served as the United States ambassador to China from 2022 to 2025. Burns has had a 25-year career in the State Department, and served as United States Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and the United States ambassador to Greece. As under secretary, he oversaw the bureaus responsible for U.S. policy in each region of the world and served in the senior career Foreign Service position at the department. He retired on April 30, 2008. He was a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in summer 2008. Burns was a professor of diplomacy and international politics at the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University and a member of the Board of Directors of the school's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Richard Nicholas Burns Robert Nicholas Burns Nicholas Burns
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Additional quotes by R. Nicholas Burns

I often get asked about decoupling, but it’s not a word that we’ve used. I always say in my talks with the business community, we’re not actively seeking to decouple two economies that have come together over 45 years, a $718 billion two-way trade relationship annually, with thousands, tens of thousands of companies interacting with each other. If either side is beginning to decouple, it’s more China than the United States. They’ve talked about it more – they don’t use the word – but that’s certainly what they’re signaling in some respects, and they’ve been taking actions far longer than we have.

My message to young people all over the world, and in the U.S., and Canada and China is engage with each other. If this is going to be the most important bilateral relationship in the world, and it is, if we are the two strongest powers, we’ve got to find a way to live together in peace. it would be insanity to think that we would allow this relationship to descend into conflict or war. We’re not going to do that. And so our people have to work together, study together, do business together. Learn Mandarin if you’re Canadian or Brit or German or American. If you’re Chinese, you study in the United States. Our door is open to Chinese students. We want Chinese students to walk through the door of our universities. I was a university professor, taught many, well over a hundred Chinese students in 12 years, and they’re great students.

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We need a president and secretary of state who will value diplomacy. Really. And we need a president and secretary of state and a Congress that will embrace the fact that most of the big challenges ahead of us are not going to lend themselves to the use of military power, but to the need to build coalitions and strengthen alliances to fight common global problems, such as future pandemics, climate change, or trafficking of women and children.

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