Nicholas Burns, Ambassador of the United States of America to the People's Republic of China, said in his opening address at the 2023 Hong Kong Forum on U.S-China Relations, “I can report to you this afternoon that the U.S.-China relationship is more stable, and there is certainly better communication between our governments. That wasn’t even the case just six months ago. That does not mean that the relationship is not competitive, because it still is. It does not mean we don't have major differences, because we still do across the board. But it does mean that we're better connected and better able to manage these differences between Washington and Beijing responsibly. In my world of diplomacy, that's progress.”