U.S.-China competition, including economic competition, has come to define U.S. foreign policy since 2017. The two economies are the first- and second-largest national economies in the world and are deeply intertwined. Changes to the relationship, however necessary, could be costly. The United States thus faces a challenge ensuring that its economy meets the nation's needs under conditions of coupled, strategic competition. To respond to this challenge, RAND researchers conducted economic and institutional analyses of U.S.-China competition, engaged in a participatory foresight exercise to understand the long-term path for ensuring U.S. economic health, and created two economic competition games exploring the dynamics of multiple countries trying to ensure their economic health while interacting with each other and the private sector. This report, the first of a four-part series, includes the economic and institutional analyses of U.S.-China economic competition. Individual chapters cover the Chinese concept of economic security; a stock-taking of China-related measures by the United States; an analysis measuring how intertwined supply chains are and options for disentangling them; a theoretical account of the effectiveness of cooperative versus restrictive modes of engaging with China and Chinese officials; and examinations of specific aspects of U.S.-China competition, including return migration of Chinese nationals from the United States to China, energy and environmental security, how Chinese privately owned enterprises might differ from Western private enterprises and implications for policy, and potential ways by which to update the rules of international trade to adapt to China's unique system of economic management.

Although U.S.-China trade tensions have waxed and waned for decades, they have remained persistently high since 2017. In this report, the authors assess the effectiveness of more-restrictive U.S. economic policies adopted toward China and pursued between 2017 and 2024. These policies include those aimed at addressing the U.S. dependence on imports from China, preventing U.S. technologies from being transferred to China, and supporting investment and production in domestic industries that are deemed critical for U.S. national security and technological leadership. The authors identify two main goals of these recent policies: promoting fairer trade and defending U.S. economic interests. In their policy review, they find that U.S. economic policies achieved limited progress in promoting fairer trade but a higher degree of success in defending U.S. economic-related interests. Finally, the authors present several policy recommendations to better achieve these two goals related to trade, industry, controls on technology, economic diplomacy, foreign investment, and diversification of supply chains away from China.