Teddy Hsieh PS 191D Prof. Tong 1 June 2013 US Federal Agencies and China The Research Project China’s rise as a new power has prompted many questions about how America should approach it in the 21st century. China has recently become the world’s 2nd largest economy in terms of Gross Domestic Product (PPP) as well as the world’s largest trading economy, and the US has taken several steps to engage a rising China to ensure amiable bilateral relations as well as China’s cooperation within the international community. While many scholars are interested in America’s national response to China’s rise, none have investigated the US’s response at the federal department and agency level. This research project compared the responses of US Federal Government Departments to the rise of China, which includes all Cabinet level agencies and their relevant sub-agencies. Specifically, the project examines these questions: 1) What US federal government agencies have China related activities? 2) What do these activities entail? 3) What has been the development of these interactions with China in the past 10 years (2002-2012)? This topic is intended to show what the American government specifically does in its relations with China at the federal level, and to investigate to what extent the departments have worked in a multi-agency cooperative effort to interact with China or if they have preferred unilateral approaches instead. And while the general public tends to perceive US-China relations as simply dialogues between leaders, this research allows for the examination of how foreign policy is created and implemented by individual governmental units through specific acts of engagement. Temporal-Spatial Domain For this project I conducted my research within the time frame of 2002-2012, particularly because many of the departments and agencies I investigated have only begun extensive interactions with China in the last 10 years. The study focused entirely on American departments at the federal level interacting in China, which includes official travels to China, signed agreements, permanent presence in China, cooperative projects or meetings with Chinese government officials or joint programs with other agencies in China. Departments are defined as government bodies in the executive branch that are authorized by Congress, each headed by a Secretary that advises the US president in his Cabinet and generally handle large policy issues. Executive agencies are more specifically designed to implement tasks, most of which are created and managed by the departments. Because of this, activities conducted by agencies on behalf of their respective departments will be considered department actions. The project investigated all 15 cabinet-level departments at the national level and their relevant sub-agencies to see which governmental bodies meet the criteria of having China-related activities. The US Departments include: Agriculture Commerce Defense Education Energy Health and Human Services Homeland Security Justice Labor State Transportation Treasury Methods and Data Sources In order to collect the information I needed regarding the activities of federal departments in China, I explored several kinds of websites as my sources, recording what I found on Excel spreadsheets. See Appendices for the results of this investigation. The primary type of website I used was the official government websites of each department, taking several steps to thoroughly search for information. For example, for the State Department I used www.state.gov, and the first section I would look for is any label related to official travel by the department’s top leaders. If the website did not contain a “travel” section on their website, I would look into the press releases and fact sheets archives for evidence if travels occurred at all. I also looked for sections related to offices or posts in China, such as links for the US embassy or another overseas office. I would also look for possible sub-agency tabs related to international affairs or foreign affairs that specifically addressed China; in the case of the State Department, this was the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Within their news archives, if possible I would set the search parameters to January 1st to December 31st of each year and search using the words “China”, “China relations”, and “China visit” in order to better organize the results by year. Next, I would look through the titles of each of the resulting publications and read through each article to determine if any of the publications met my criteria for Chinese-related activities. No website was perfect in their arrangement and design, nor were the publications completely extensive. For instance, the Treasury and Defense Departments’ websites were very well designed in making information easily accessible, with specific tabs and parameters that could be used to narrow searches. However, sometimes there were incomplete sections, where only one year was publicly listed and the information from other years would have to be found through archive searches. Other websites simply lacked search parameters and I had to look through all of the documents relating to or containing the word “China” in order to find where 2002 began. There were also several occasions when the link for the article simply did not work because the file was either corrupted or no longer existed in the system. In terms of inconsistencies, articles for some annual programs such as the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade were available for some years but missing for others. In order to fulfill some of these inconsistencies or missing proof of these events having taken place, I would use news websites that mentioned the missing event through Google searches to supplement the data I had already found. This was particularly helpful when a newspaper such as the Chinese People’s Daily Online provided an article featuring an event that the government websites had no information on. Otherwise American newspapers such as the New York Times also provided proof that these events happened. The Data Official Travels to China The first category I searched for was official travels to China by each of the departments. Travels by government officials to China might involve visitations for annual forums, negotiations over bilateral issues, consultations for multilateral meetings such as the Six-Party Talks, or even for community relations. These visits are important because they not only convey the recognition of another country’s sovereignty, but they are also a tangible means of face-to-face diplomacy by which two countries can strengthen ties with one another. For this study I counted every travel by any government official that was recorded in an official press release, publication or fact sheet from the archives of each government website. As long as there was an official article to prove that a visitation occurred, it was counted in this study. If it was clear that a visit should have occurred but there was no corresponding article, I would first search articles published after the visit to see if it was mentioned as a previous event. If not, then I would search news articles to see if they had any pertinent articles. Finally, if neither option were successful, I would count the visit anyway and make a note in my data if there was missing proof. In this category I expected that travels to China would increase over time as the American government became more involved in bilateral relations. Figure 1a shows the total number of visits that each department made to China during the years 2002 to 2012, and Figure 1b represents what each department contributed to the overall number of visits as a percentage. Unsurprisingly, the State Department dwarfs the other departments with a total of 67 visits out of a combined 174 to China. This is an expected result because the State Department is designed to be the official foreign relations arm of the United States, advancing the nation’s interests through the implementation of US foreign policy and diplomacy with other countries. Naturally, this would require the State Department to be more active abroad than other departments, especially if it is primarily tasked with meeting with foreign leaders and representing US interests. What is surprising is that the Justice Department had travels to China at all, considering it only included two visits from two Attorney-Generals that encouraged future cooperation in law enforcement. Figure 2 shows the total number of visits all the departments made to China per year. The year 2008 is demonstrably the period of the most visits to China, while 2004 was the period of the least amount of visits. The years of 2006-2008 show a rapid increase in visits, which was most likely caused by the occurrence of the Six-Party Talks during those years. The Six-Party Talks were a series of multi-lateral meetings in which the US, China, North Korea, Japan, South Korea and Russia met to discuss resolutions in the wake of North Korea’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. After the meetings were canceled by North Korea’s failed satellite launch in 2009, there is a noticeable drop in visits, but this is followed by another increasing trend during the years 2009-2011. This latter trend could possibly be explained by the increased involvement in cooperative forums such as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, China’s rise as the second largest economy in the world as of 2010 and Obama’s subsequent Pivot Policy, as well as additional North Korean aggression in the Korean Peninsula in 2010. Another possible factor could be the shuffling of the presidential cabinet as Obama took office after the 2008 election. It may have taken his cabinet secretaries time to settle into their new positions and subsequently this may have delayed the new cabinet’s outreach to China. Figure 2 does not present a clear pattern of China visits by federal departments. While the visits have been consistently greater than 10 visits after 2005, the amount of visits per year do not show a strong increase over the time period. Agreements with China The second category I searched for was bilateral agreements made between US Departments and Chinese government agencies. The agreements took the form of Memoranda of Understandings, Letters of Intent, Agreements, Guidelines, Letters of Understanding, etc. The purpose of these agreements is to create beneficial frameworks where both parties may have room to achieve mutual goals. Though they do not have legally binding powers, they are more flexible than contracts and are more formal than verbal agreements. These agreements are not considered to be at the level of treaties, and therefore do not need Senate approval through ratification. I chose to record signed agreements because they are publicly announced as seen in articles, are more accountable than verbal agreements, and there have been no formal bilateral treaties with China since the Mutual Defense Treaty with the pre-communist government. It is important to understand the occurrence of these agreements because it is a means by which the US and China can improve their relations with one another through cooperative measures. For this study, any signed agreement titled in a similar manner to what was mentioned in the above paragraph was counted as long as there was a publication that proved the agreement occurred at all. On multiple occasions some department websites provided information on the agreements of other departments, such as the Treasury Department website showing an agreement made between the Transportation Department and its Chinese counterpart despite the Transportation Department’s lack of a relevant article in its own database. Figure 3a shows the number of agreements that each department had with China in the course of 2002-2012, and Figure 3b shows the contribution of each department to the total amount of agreements as a percentage. It can be seen that the Energy Department has the most number of agreements made with China, followed by Agriculture and Commerce. The dominance of the Energy Department, with 42 out of 126 combined agreements, might be explained by America’s recent turn towards alternative energy sources, as stipulated by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Moreover, as China began pursuing renewable energy sources with its Renewable Energy Law in 2006, it is no surprise that the US would seek to engage one of the largest polluters on Earth in addition to itself. The Defense, Homeland Security and Justice Departments all have the least amount of agreements. The Defense Department only has agreements regarding the investigation of past POW’s and still missing personnel from past wars, and it is unlikely that the armed forces of the two countries would be eligible to negotiate agreements besides minor issues dealing with history without the Defense Secretary or other upper echelon leaders. The Homeland Security Department is mostly concerned with US national security, and while cooperation with its Chinese counterpart may be beneficial, formalized agreements are probably unnecessary given the Department’s emphasis on the domestic sphere. Finally, the Justice Department is largely concerned with domestic crimes and infractions of the law, so agreements with their Chinese counterparts would be unlikely as well. Figure 4 shows the total number of agreements made per year. There is a peak of agreements in the year 2009, but after that year there is a noticeable decrease in signed agreements, with 2012 having the least amount. For several of the departments, there is a surprising lack of data for the year 2012. For example, in the Agriculture Department there were generally more than two agreements per year, except 2012 which yields no data at all. It is also interesting to note that the three years before were consecutively increasing from two agreements to four agreements in 2011. Similarly, despite having four or more agreements in 2010 or 2011, the Commerce and Energy Departments also had significant drops to one or no agreements at all. One possible explanation for the decrease from 2009 to 2012 may be that US federal departments may have spent more time interacting with other countries as a result of Obama’s first term and the later introduction of his “Pivot” policy. Another explanation may be that the departments may have already addressed most policy areas of concern to both countries during the years prior to 2012, and thus there may have been no need for new agreements or the renewing of any agreements. Though the number of agreements made per year beginning from 2002 was consistently greater than five until 2012, the data again presents no clear pattern of increase regarding departmental activity with China. Offices and Posts The third category I investigated focused on how many permanent offices or posts (if any) that the departments had in China. These overseas positions allow each agency to have a presence in China in order to monitor their specific policy areas as well as relations with their Chinese counterparts. For example, the Department of Agriculture has Agricultural Trade Offices in Beijing as well as in four other major cities in order to monitor and report on agricultural trade reports in different parts of China. Likewise, the Commerce Department’s Commercial Service has many regional offices throughout the country that provide custom regional support for US businesses to start and expand trade in China. The offices themselves are usually located within the US Embassy or Consulates in the major cities, sharing the building location with other agencies. In order to determine if an agency had an overseas office or post, I searched each government website for its “office” section. If there was no such explicit section, I used the website’s search engine with “China office” to find the appropriate links. I did not record the years that the offices were established because some were founded in years not included in this study and some positions do not have date information. Like the agreements category, some websites provided multiple links for several different agency offices in one location, such as the US Embassy in Beijing website, which allowed me to record the offices of Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, and Energy. Some posts such as the full-time epidemiologist for the Department of Health and Human Services were more obscure and were sometimes mentioned as a part of articles related to activities in China. Figure 5 shows the number of offices or posts that each department has in China. The Commerce Department has the most offices with 20 out of a total of 49 offices, which highlights the importance of the economic relationship between the US and China. The Defense, Education, Labor, Transportation and Treasury Departments have no offices at all. The Defense Department does not have a permanent presence in China because that would amount to constructing a military base which would be considered a violation of China’s sovereignty. The other four departments probably do not have any offices because there is no need to monitor or report conditions related to their policy areas in China. The only office that the Energy Department has is located in Beijing. The Commerce Department has the most offices most likely because it is trying to maximize its coverage of China’s diverse industries throughout the country. In comparison to agriculture, trade is much more varied in scope than agricultural trade because the latter is more specific in its industry. The State Department’s Embassy and Consulates are located in major cities in order to help American citizens as well as facilitate travel and business for Chinese citizens wishing to conduct activity in the US, while their Virtual Presence Posts are in relatively minor cities. Figure 6 shows the number of US offices and posts located in each Chinese city known to have them. It is reasonable that Beijing should have the most amount of offices as well as the most amount of departments involved given that it is China’s capital city. For the departments to have offices in major cities such as Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Shenyang is also reasonable because of their importance as major industrial, trade and technological centers. The rest of the cities listed with single offices are most likely a part of the Commerce Department’s desire to involve itself in as many trade centers as possible in order to support the expansion of US business in China. While the data does not show a particular trend regarding the creation of new offices over time, it does show that these offices and posts are widespread throughout China and not solely concentrated in the capital and major cities. Greater involvement by American departments in Chinese cities through improved diplomatic and commercial ties may encourage increased numbers of permanent offices in the future, especially as the Commerce Department has already expanded to smaller cities. Projects and Activities The fourth category of this study examines the development of departmental projects and activities in China. This includes cooperative projects, forums, community relations, exchanges and dialogues. The purpose of these activities is to enhance cooperation and improve ties between the departments and their Chinese counterparts, as well as facilitate collaborative efforts to accomplish common interests. By recording the development of projects and activities of various departments over 2002-2012, I hoped to find evidence that the US government was becoming increasingly more involved with China. In researching this category, I was surprised to find that some departments had extensive community relations projects. For example, the Defense Department has sent Army bands to China to participate in joint concerts, Navy sailors to visit orphanages, middle schools and centers for the disabled and elderly, and Air Force medical technicians to help train their Chinese counterparts. For this category I searched press release and fact sheet archives and newspaper archives if necessary, with most of the pertinent documents the same as the ones used for the official travels section. This was helpful because each of these documents explained why the department official was visiting China, allowing me to record and track their travels and activities simultaneously. An activity was recorded as long as it was proved to have happened by a press release, fact sheet or news article. The project or activity must be bilateral in nature as opposed to one-sided such as an agricultural report on Chinese soybeans or multi-lateral such as the Six-Party Talks. Some of these activities occurred both in China and in the United States, such as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue which switched locations each year. If a project was ongoing, such as the Labor Law Cooperation Program that lasted from 2002-2007, it was counted once per year as a project. Figure 7a shows the total number of projects and activities that each department had in China and Figure 7b shows each department’s contribution to the total number of projects and activities as a percentage. The Defense Department has the largest sum of projects and activities in China with 33 out of a total of 219, which includes military-to-military relations and exercises, community relations projects with local Chinese civilian centers, and even joint concerts for American and Chinese military bands. It appears that the Defense Department has been conducting similar activities throughout 2002-2012, and from 2008 onwards these activities increased in frequency. The Justice Department has zero projects and activities with China, which can be explained by its emphasis on domestic crime issues rather than international issues. It is also interesting to note that seven of the departments all take up anywhere from 10-15% of the total number of projects and activities, suggesting that these interactions are not strongly concentrated in one particular department and supports the notion that there is a common desire to engage China among the departments. However, this chart includes both unilateral and multi-lateral activities among the agencies and cannot be used to determine widespread cooperation. Figure 8 shows the total number of projects and activities all of the departments have conducted for each year. Apart from the slight drop in 2009 and the plateau from 2011 to 2012, the number of activities has generally increased by more than twice as much relative to 2002. It is possible that the deviation in 2009 is due to Obama’s taking office and the subsequent shuffling of his cabinet, which may have caused the drop in activities. Compared to the previous categories, the projects and activities category has the most visible trend of increase relative to the beginning of the temporal domain. And in conjunction with the relatively even spread of interactions among the departments, this is also the strongest case for a general increase in US relations with China. These projects and activities are probably more effective in portraying US interactions with China than the official travels category because these activities occurred in both China and in the US. With the second category, there can only be so many agreements made in specific policy areas that have not already been addressed, but with activities such as annual forums and dialogues they are more likely to continue consistently unless there is a period of time where US-China relations significantly decline. And thirdly, because the creation and offices and posts have not been measured over time the two categories cannot be compared in terms of yearly development, but both serve to show how widespread both sets of US-China interactions are. Joint Programs The fifth and last category I examined involved the recording of joint programs, or programs that included more than one agency interacting with China. This category was not intended to measure development over time, but instead to investigate whether the departments were more likely to work together in their activities with China or prefer unilateral interactions. These programs can include projects, forums, meetings, and community relations activities, much like the previous category. The use of the word “programs” is not used exclusively, and is interchangeable with “activities” for the purposes of this study. These were already recorded under the projects and activities category, but they have been placed in another category for the purpose of examining to what extent the departments are willing to cooperate in joint projects with one another. Examining the number of joint programs is important because it shows to what extent agencies are willing to participate in multi-agency projects as opposed to single agency ones. One such example is the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, an annual meeting in which multiple American agencies meet with their Chinese counterparts in a high level bilateral forum that allows American and Chinese leaders to discuss broad policy issues that deal with both international and domestic concerns in order to promote mutual interests. In this study there were no joint community relations activities. In order for the results of this category to be significant with regards to a general trend in department cooperation, more than half of the total projects and activities should be joint programs. Figure 9a shows the total number of joint programs that each department has participated in from 2002-2012, as well as the actual number of joint programs that were recorded, which was eight. Figure 9b shows the contribution each department has in total participation in joint programs as a percentage. The data shows that the Commerce Department has participated in the most joint programs, and that the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Justice have not participated in any joint programs. The Commerce Department’s participation in the Environmental Industries Forum is joined by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is not listed in this study because it is not a cabinet-level agency. The spread of participation is less evenly distributed than the projects and activities category, and the concentration in the Commerce and State Departments suggests that those two departments are more likely to participate in joint programs than the others. Their greater participation also suggests their willingness to engage China in a more cooperative manner with other departments. Interestingly, the Commerce Department is more often the head of these joint programs than the State Department is, such as its leadership in the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, the Oil and Gas Industry Forum, the Environmental Industries Forum, and the Innovation Conferences of 2007 and 2010. However, the Treasury Department has taken the leadership position for the joint programs with the most number of participating agencies, such as the Strategic Economic Dialogue, the Strategic and Economic Dialogue and the Ten Year Energy and Environment Cooperation Framework. The only State Department initiated program that was recorded was Hillary Clinton’s 100,000 Strong Initiative, in which the Education Department is mentioned a participant. The rest of the State Department’s participation in joint programs is related to strategic and diplomatic purposes rather than economic like the Treasury or Commerce Departments, but the State Department is not publicly listed as taking a leadership or chairmanship position in these programs. In comparison to the fourth category of overall projects and activities, the joint programs category appears to show that departments have a preference towards single agency programs rather than multi-agency programs. Considering that there were only 49 joint activities among the 219 various projects and activities that the departments participated in during 2002-2012, there does not seem to be a united nor concentrated movement towards interacting with China. This lack of joint programs might be explained by the difficulty of planning multi-agency activities with China, given that many of the departments focus on diverse policy areas and may have no interest in a joint program. For instance, apart from the Strategic Economic Dialogue and the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, the Health and Human Services Department focuses largely on health-specific projects and issues, and it does not share any joint programs with other departments most likely because of its health policy specialization. Based on the amount of participation in joint programs that was recorded, there does not appear to be a trend of multi-agency cooperation in US department relations with China. Conclusion This project investigated the development of US-China relations at the department level over the course of 2002 to 2012. I researched five separate categories of departmental activities, including official travels to China, signed agreements made with Chinese officials, permanent offices and posts in China, projects and activities, and finally joint programs among multiple agencies. For official travels, there was a strong concentration of total travels in the State Department. Additionally, while there was a visible increase in the quantity of travels taken by US departments to China, the amount of visits varied greatly and lacked consistency. It is unclear if these travels are to increase in the future. Regarding signed agreements, there was a high concentration in the Energy, Agriculture and Commerce Departments. Much like the official travels, while there was an overall increase in the number of signed agreements, there was a lack of a consistent trend, particularly as the number declined after the peak in 2009. In terms of permanent posts and offices, most of them were concentrated in the Commerce, State and Agriculture Departments. There was also a high concentration of posts in Beijing, which is unsurprising given that it is the nation’s capital. But it was also interesting to find that more than half of the offices were located outside of Beijing and spread throughout the country. For projects and activities undertaken in or with China, the activities were more evenly distributed among the departments and there was a more visibly consistent trend of increase compared to other categories. And for joint programs among multiple agencies, there were much fewer instances of cooperative activities among the agencies compared to the overall scope of projects and activities, suggesting that the departments do not have a preference towards cooperation and instead prefer unilateral actions. Through these results, the only clear increasing trend lies with projects and activities undertaken by the departments, albeit independently of each other. However the results as a whole do imply that over the course of 2002-2012, there has been an overall increase in the amount of activities taken with China, even if the amount per year has not been in a consistent pattern. Based on this project it seems that cabinet-level departments are more likely to be independent in their activities but overall those that do have activities with China are increasing their interactions in comparison to 2002, which emphasizes the growing importance of China to American foreign policy.

Teddy Hsieh
PS 191D
Prof. Tong
1 June 2013
US Federal Agencies and China
The Research Project
China’s rise as a new power has prompted many questions about how America should approach it in the 21st century. China has recently become the world’s 2nd largest economy in terms of Gross Domestic Product (PPP) as well as the world’s largest trading economy, and the US has taken several steps to engage a rising China to ensure amiable bilateral relations as well as China’s cooperation within the international community. While many scholars are interested in America’s national response to China’s rise, none have investigated the US’s response at the federal department and agency level. This research project compared the responses of US Federal Government Departments to the rise of China, which includes all Cabinet level agencies and their relevant sub-agencies.  Specifically, the project examines these questions:
1) What US federal government agencies have China related activities?
2) What do these activities entail?
3) What has been the development of these interactions with China in the past 10 years (2002-2012)?
This topic is intended to show what the American government specifically does in its relations with China at the federal level, and to investigate to what extent the departments have worked in a multi-agency cooperative effort to interact with China or if they have preferred unilateral approaches instead. And while the general public tends to perceive US-China relations as simply dialogues between leaders, this research allows for the examination of how foreign policy is created and implemented by individual governmental units through specific acts of engagement.
Temporal-Spatial Domain
For this project I conducted my research within the time frame of 2002-2012, particularly because many of the departments and agencies I investigated have only begun extensive interactions with China in the last 10 years. The study focused entirely on American departments at the federal level interacting in China, which includes official travels to China, signed agreements, permanent presence in China, cooperative projects or meetings with Chinese government officials or joint programs with other agencies in China.
Departments are defined as government bodies in the executive branch that are authorized by Congress, each headed by a Secretary that advises the US president in his Cabinet and generally handle large policy issues. Executive agencies are more specifically designed to implement tasks, most of which are created and managed by the departments. Because of this, activities conducted by agencies on behalf of their respective departments will be considered department actions. The project investigated all 15 cabinet-level departments at the national level and their relevant sub-agencies to see which governmental bodies meet the criteria of having China-related activities.
The US Departments include:
Agriculture
Commerce
Defense
Education
Energy
Health and Human Services
Homeland Security
Justice
Labor
State
Transportation
Treasury
Methods and Data Sources
In order to collect the information I needed regarding the activities of federal departments in China, I explored several kinds of websites as my sources, recording what I found on Excel spreadsheets. See Appendices for the results of this investigation.
The primary type of website I used was the official government websites of each department, taking several steps to thoroughly search for information. For example, for the State Department I used www.state.gov, and the first section I would look for is any label related to official travel by the department’s top leaders. If the website did not contain a “travel” section on their website, I would look into the press releases and fact sheets archives for evidence if travels occurred at all. I also looked for sections related to offices or posts in China, such as links for the US embassy or another overseas office. I would also look for possible sub-agency tabs related to international affairs or foreign affairs that specifically addressed China; in the case of the State Department, this was the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Within their news archives, if possible I would set the search parameters to January 1st to December 31st of each year and search using the words “China”, “China relations”, and “China visit” in order to better organize the results by year.  Next, I would look through the titles of each of the resulting publications and read through each article to determine if any of the publications met my criteria for Chinese-related activities.
No website was perfect in their arrangement and design, nor were the publications completely extensive. For instance, the Treasury and Defense Departments’ websites were very well designed in making information easily accessible, with specific tabs and parameters that could be used to narrow searches. However, sometimes there were incomplete sections, where only one year was publicly listed and the information from other years would have to be found through archive searches. Other websites simply lacked search parameters and I had to look through all of the documents relating to or containing the word “China” in order to find where 2002 began. There were also several occasions when the link for the article simply did not work because the file was either corrupted or no longer existed in the system. In terms of inconsistencies, articles for some annual programs such as the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade were available for some years but missing for others.
In order to fulfill some of these inconsistencies or missing proof of these events having taken place, I would use news websites that mentioned the missing event through Google searches to supplement the data I had already found. This was particularly helpful when a newspaper such as the Chinese People’s Daily Online provided an article featuring an event that the government websites had no information on. Otherwise American newspapers such as the New York Times also provided proof that these events happened.
The Data
Official Travels to China
The first category I searched for was official travels to China by each of the departments. Travels by government officials to China might involve visitations for annual forums, negotiations over bilateral issues, consultations for multilateral meetings such as the Six-Party Talks, or even for community relations. These visits are important because they not only convey the recognition of another country’s sovereignty, but they are also a tangible means of face-to-face diplomacy by which two countries can strengthen ties with one another.
For this study I counted every travel by any government official that was recorded in an official press release, publication or fact sheet from the archives of each government website. As long as there was an official article to prove that a visitation occurred, it was counted in this study. If it was clear that a visit should have occurred but there was no corresponding article, I would first search articles published after the visit to see if it was mentioned as a previous event. If not, then I would search news articles to see if they had any pertinent articles. Finally, if neither option were successful, I would count the visit anyway and make a note in my data if there was missing proof. In this category I expected that travels to China would increase over time as the American government became more involved in bilateral relations.


Figure 1a shows the total number of visits that each department made to China during the years 2002 to 2012, and Figure 1b represents what each department contributed to the overall number of visits as a percentage. Unsurprisingly, the State Department dwarfs the other departments with a total of 67 visits out of a combined 174 to China. This is an expected result because the State Department is designed to be the official foreign relations arm of the United States, advancing the nation’s interests through the implementation of US foreign policy and diplomacy with other countries. Naturally, this would require the State Department to be more active abroad than other departments, especially if it is primarily tasked with meeting with foreign leaders and representing US interests. What is surprising is that the Justice Department had travels to China at all, considering it only included two visits from two Attorney-Generals that encouraged future cooperation in law enforcement.

Figure 2 shows the total number of visits all the departments made to China per year. The year 2008 is demonstrably the period of the most visits to China, while 2004 was the period of the least amount of visits. The years of 2006-2008 show a rapid increase in visits, which was most likely caused by the occurrence of the Six-Party Talks during those years. The Six-Party Talks were a series of multi-lateral meetings in which the US, China, North Korea, Japan, South Korea and Russia met to discuss resolutions in the wake of North Korea’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. After the meetings were canceled by North Korea’s failed satellite launch in 2009, there is a noticeable drop in visits, but this is followed by another increasing trend during the years 2009-2011. This latter trend could possibly be explained by the increased involvement in cooperative forums such as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, China’s rise as the second largest economy in the world as of 2010 and Obama’s subsequent Pivot Policy, as well as additional North Korean aggression in the Korean Peninsula in 2010. Another possible factor could be the shuffling of the presidential cabinet as Obama took office after the 2008 election. It may have taken his cabinet secretaries time to settle into their new positions and subsequently this may have delayed the new cabinet’s outreach to China.
Figure 2 does not present a clear pattern of China visits by federal departments. While the visits have been consistently greater than 10 visits after 2005, the amount of visits per year do not show a strong increase over the time period.
Agreements with China
The second category I searched for was bilateral agreements made between US Departments and Chinese government agencies. The agreements took the form of Memoranda of Understandings, Letters of Intent, Agreements, Guidelines, Letters of Understanding, etc. The purpose of these agreements is to create beneficial frameworks where both parties may have room to achieve mutual goals. Though they do not have legally binding powers, they are more flexible than contracts and are more formal than verbal agreements. These agreements are not considered to be at the level of treaties, and therefore do not need Senate approval through ratification. I chose to record signed agreements because they are publicly announced as seen in articles, are more accountable than verbal agreements, and there have been no formal bilateral treaties with China since the Mutual Defense Treaty with the pre-communist government.  It is important to understand the occurrence of these agreements because it is a means by which the US and China can improve their relations with one another through cooperative measures.
For this study, any signed agreement titled in a similar manner to what was mentioned in the above paragraph was counted as long as there was a publication that proved the agreement occurred at all. On multiple occasions some department websites provided information on the agreements of other departments, such as the Treasury Department website showing an agreement made between the Transportation Department and its Chinese counterpart despite the Transportation Department’s lack of a relevant article in its own database.


Figure 3a shows the number of agreements that each department had with China in the course of 2002-2012, and Figure 3b shows the contribution of each department to the total amount of agreements as a percentage. It can be seen that the Energy Department has the most number of agreements made with China, followed by Agriculture and Commerce. The dominance of the Energy Department, with 42 out of 126 combined agreements, might be explained by America’s recent turn towards alternative energy sources, as stipulated by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. Moreover, as China began pursuing renewable energy sources with its Renewable Energy Law in 2006, it is no surprise that the US would seek to engage one of the largest polluters on Earth in addition to itself. The Defense, Homeland Security and Justice Departments all have the least amount of agreements. The Defense Department only has agreements regarding the investigation of past POW’s and still missing personnel from past wars, and it is unlikely that the armed forces of the two countries would be eligible to negotiate agreements besides minor issues dealing with history without the Defense Secretary or other upper echelon leaders. The Homeland Security Department is mostly concerned with US national security, and while cooperation with its Chinese counterpart may be beneficial, formalized agreements are probably unnecessary given the Department’s emphasis on the domestic sphere. Finally, the Justice Department is largely concerned with domestic crimes and infractions of the law, so agreements with their Chinese counterparts would be unlikely as well.

Figure 4 shows the total number of agreements made per year. There is a peak of agreements in the year 2009, but after that year there is a noticeable decrease in signed agreements, with 2012 having the least amount. For several of the departments, there is a surprising lack of data for the year 2012. For example, in the Agriculture Department there were generally more than two agreements per year, except 2012 which yields no data at all. It is also interesting to note that the three years before were consecutively increasing from two agreements to four agreements in 2011. Similarly, despite having four or more agreements in 2010 or 2011, the Commerce and Energy Departments also had significant drops to one or no agreements at all. One possible explanation for the decrease from 2009 to 2012 may be that US federal departments may have spent more time interacting with other countries as a result of Obama’s first term and the later introduction of his “Pivot” policy. Another explanation may be that the departments may have already addressed most policy areas of concern to both countries during the years prior to 2012, and thus there may have been no need for new agreements or the renewing of any agreements.
Though the number of agreements made per year beginning from 2002 was consistently greater than five until 2012, the data again presents no clear pattern of increase regarding departmental activity with China.
Offices and Posts
The third category I investigated focused on how many permanent offices or posts (if any) that the departments had in China. These overseas positions allow each agency to have a presence in China in order to monitor their specific policy areas as well as relations with their Chinese counterparts. For example, the Department of Agriculture has Agricultural Trade Offices in Beijing as well as in four other major cities in order to monitor and report on agricultural trade reports in different parts of China.  Likewise, the Commerce Department’s Commercial Service has many regional offices throughout the country that provide custom regional support for US businesses to start and expand trade in China. The offices themselves are usually located within the US Embassy or Consulates in the major cities, sharing the building location with other agencies.
In order to determine if an agency had an overseas office or post, I searched each government website for its “office” section. If there was no such explicit section, I used the website’s search engine with “China office” to find the appropriate links. I did not record the years that the offices were established because some were founded in years not included in this study and some positions do not have date information.  Like the agreements category, some websites provided multiple links for several different agency offices in one location, such as the US Embassy in Beijing website, which allowed me to record the offices of Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, and Energy. Some posts such as the full-time epidemiologist for the Department of Health and Human Services were more obscure and were sometimes mentioned as a part of articles related to activities in China.

Figure 5 shows the number of offices or posts that each department has in China. The Commerce Department has the most offices with 20 out of a total of 49 offices, which highlights the importance of the economic relationship between the US and China. The Defense, Education, Labor, Transportation and Treasury Departments have no offices at all. The Defense Department does not have a permanent presence in China because that would amount to constructing a military base which would be considered a violation of China’s sovereignty. The other four departments probably do not have any offices because there is no need to monitor or report conditions related to their policy areas in China. The only office that the Energy Department has is located in Beijing. The Commerce Department has the most offices most likely because it is trying to maximize its coverage of China’s diverse industries throughout the country. In comparison to agriculture, trade is much more varied in scope than agricultural trade because the latter is more specific in its industry. The State Department’s Embassy and Consulates are located in major cities in order to help American citizens as well as facilitate travel and business for Chinese citizens wishing to conduct activity in the US, while their Virtual Presence Posts are in relatively minor cities.

Figure 6 shows the number of US offices and posts located in each Chinese city known to have them. It is reasonable that Beijing should have the most amount of offices as well as the most amount of departments involved given that it is China’s capital city. For the departments to have offices in major cities such as Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Shenyang is also reasonable because of their importance as major industrial, trade and technological centers. The rest of the cities listed with single offices are most likely a part of the Commerce Department’s desire to involve itself in as many trade centers as possible in order to support the expansion of US business in China.
While the data does not show a particular trend regarding the creation of new offices over time, it does show that these offices and posts are widespread throughout China and not solely concentrated in the capital and major cities. Greater involvement by American departments in Chinese cities through improved diplomatic and commercial ties may encourage increased numbers of permanent offices in the future, especially as the Commerce Department has already expanded to smaller cities.
Projects and Activities
The fourth category of this study examines the development of departmental projects and activities in China. This includes cooperative projects, forums, community relations, exchanges and dialogues. The purpose of these activities is to enhance cooperation and improve ties between the departments and their Chinese counterparts, as well as facilitate collaborative efforts to accomplish common interests. By recording the development of projects and activities of various departments over 2002-2012, I hoped to find evidence that the US government was becoming increasingly more involved with China. In researching this category, I was surprised to find that some departments had extensive community relations projects. For example, the Defense Department has sent Army bands to China to participate in joint concerts, Navy sailors to visit orphanages, middle schools and centers for the disabled and elderly, and Air Force medical technicians to help train their Chinese counterparts.
For this category I searched press release and fact sheet archives and newspaper archives if necessary, with most of the pertinent documents the same as the ones used for the official travels section. This was helpful because each of these documents explained why the department official was visiting China, allowing me to record and track their travels and activities simultaneously. An activity was recorded as long as it was proved to have happened by a press release, fact sheet or news article. The project or activity must be bilateral in nature as opposed to one-sided such as an agricultural report on Chinese soybeans or multi-lateral such as the Six-Party Talks. Some of these activities occurred both in China and in the United States, such as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue which switched locations each year. If a project was ongoing, such as the Labor Law Cooperation Program that lasted from 2002-2007, it was counted once per year as a project.


Figure 7a shows the total number of projects and activities that each department had in China and Figure 7b shows each department’s contribution to the total number of projects and activities as a percentage. The Defense Department has the largest sum of projects and activities in China with 33 out of a total of 219, which includes military-to-military relations and exercises, community relations projects with local Chinese civilian centers, and even joint concerts for American and Chinese military bands. It appears that the Defense Department has been conducting similar activities throughout 2002-2012, and from 2008 onwards these activities increased in frequency. The Justice Department has zero projects and activities with China, which can be explained by its emphasis on domestic crime issues rather than international issues. It is also interesting to note that seven of the departments all take up anywhere from 10-15% of the total number of projects and activities, suggesting that these interactions are not strongly concentrated in one particular department and supports the notion that there is a common desire to engage China among the departments. However, this chart includes both unilateral and multi-lateral activities among the agencies and cannot be used to determine widespread cooperation.

Figure 8 shows the total number of projects and activities all of the departments have conducted for each year. Apart from the slight drop in 2009 and the plateau from 2011 to 2012, the number of activities has generally increased by more than twice as much relative to 2002. It is possible that the deviation in 2009 is due to Obama’s taking office and the subsequent shuffling of his cabinet, which may have caused the drop in activities.
Compared to the previous categories, the projects and activities category has the most visible trend of increase relative to the beginning of the temporal domain. And in conjunction with the relatively even spread of interactions among the departments, this is also the strongest case for a general increase in US relations with China. These projects and activities are probably more effective in portraying US interactions with China than the official travels category because these activities occurred in both China and in the US. With the second category, there can only be so many agreements made in specific policy areas that have not already been addressed, but with activities such as annual forums and dialogues they are more likely to continue consistently unless there is a period of time where US-China relations significantly decline. And thirdly, because the creation and offices and posts have not been measured over time the two categories cannot be compared in terms of yearly development, but both serve to show how widespread both sets of US-China interactions are.
Joint Programs
The fifth and last category I examined involved the recording of joint programs, or programs that included more than one agency interacting with China. This category was not intended to measure development over time, but instead to investigate whether the departments were more likely to work together in their activities with China or prefer unilateral interactions. These programs can include projects, forums, meetings, and community relations activities, much like the previous category. The use of the word “programs” is not used exclusively, and is interchangeable with “activities” for the purposes of this study. These were already recorded under the projects and activities category, but they have been placed in another category for the purpose of examining to what extent the departments are willing to cooperate in joint projects with one another. Examining the number of joint programs is important because it shows to what extent agencies are willing to participate in multi-agency projects as opposed to single agency ones. One such example is the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, an annual meeting in which multiple American agencies meet with their Chinese counterparts in a high level bilateral forum that allows American and Chinese leaders to discuss broad policy issues that deal with both international and domestic concerns in order to promote mutual interests. In this study there were no joint community relations activities. In order for the results of this category to be significant with regards to a general trend in department cooperation, more than half of the total projects and activities should be joint programs.


Figure 9a shows the total number of joint programs that each department has participated in from 2002-2012, as well as the actual number of joint programs that were recorded, which was eight. Figure 9b shows the contribution each department has in total participation in joint programs as a percentage. The data shows that the Commerce Department has participated in the most joint programs, and that the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Justice have not participated in any joint programs. The Commerce Department’s participation in the Environmental Industries Forum is joined by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is not listed in this study because it is not a cabinet-level agency. The spread of participation is less evenly distributed than the projects and activities category, and the concentration in the Commerce and State Departments suggests that those two departments are more likely to participate in joint programs than the others. Their greater participation also suggests their willingness to engage China in a more cooperative manner with other departments. Interestingly, the Commerce Department is more often the head of these joint programs than the State Department is, such as its leadership in the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, the Oil and Gas Industry Forum, the Environmental Industries Forum, and the Innovation Conferences of 2007 and 2010. However, the Treasury Department has taken the leadership position for the joint programs with the most number of participating agencies, such as the Strategic Economic Dialogue, the Strategic and Economic Dialogue and the Ten Year Energy and Environment Cooperation Framework. The only State Department initiated program that was recorded was Hillary Clinton’s 100,000 Strong Initiative, in which the Education Department is mentioned a participant. The rest of the State Department’s participation in joint programs is related to strategic and diplomatic purposes rather than economic like the Treasury or Commerce Departments, but the State Department is not publicly listed as taking a leadership or chairmanship position in these programs.
In comparison to the fourth category of overall projects and activities, the joint programs category appears to show that departments have a preference towards single agency programs rather than multi-agency programs. Considering that there were only 49 joint activities among the 219 various projects and activities that the departments participated in during 2002-2012, there does not seem to be a united nor concentrated movement towards interacting with China. This lack of joint programs might be explained by the difficulty of planning multi-agency activities with China, given that many of the departments focus on diverse policy areas and may have no interest in a joint program. For instance, apart from the Strategic Economic Dialogue and the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, the Health and Human Services Department focuses largely on health-specific projects and issues, and it does not share any joint programs with other departments most likely because of its health policy specialization. Based on the amount of participation in joint programs that was recorded, there does not appear to be a trend of multi-agency cooperation in US department relations with China.
Conclusion
This project investigated the development of US-China relations at the department level over the course of 2002 to 2012. I researched five separate categories of departmental activities, including official travels to China, signed agreements made with Chinese officials, permanent offices and posts in China, projects and activities, and finally joint programs among multiple agencies. For official travels, there was a strong concentration of total travels in the State Department. Additionally, while there was a visible increase in the quantity of travels taken by US departments to China, the amount of visits varied greatly and lacked consistency. It is unclear if these travels are to increase in the future. Regarding signed agreements, there was a high concentration in the Energy, Agriculture and Commerce Departments. Much like the official travels, while there was an overall increase in the number of signed agreements, there was a lack of a consistent trend, particularly as the number declined after the peak in 2009. In terms of permanent posts and offices, most of them were concentrated in the Commerce, State and Agriculture Departments. There was also a high concentration of posts in Beijing, which is unsurprising given that it is the nation’s capital. But it was also interesting to find that more than half of the offices were located outside of Beijing and spread throughout the country. For projects and activities undertaken in or with China, the activities were more evenly distributed among the departments and there was a more visibly consistent trend of increase compared to other categories. And for joint programs among multiple agencies, there were much fewer instances of cooperative activities among the agencies compared to the overall scope of projects and activities, suggesting that the departments do not have a preference towards cooperation and instead prefer unilateral actions. Through these results, the only clear increasing trend lies with projects and activities undertaken by the departments, albeit independently of each other. However the results as a whole do imply that over the course of 2002-2012, there has been an overall increase in the amount of activities taken with China, even if the amount per year has not been in a consistent pattern. Based on this project it seems that cabinet-level departments are more likely to be independent in their activities but overall those that do have activities with China are increasing their interactions in comparison to 2002, which emphasizes the growing importance of China to American foreign policy.