34 MARCH-APRIL 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL The long history of U.S.-China civil nuclear cooperation should not be forgotten. Nor should it be reduced, as in some simplistic narratives, to a story of China stealing U.S. IP to race ahead in civil nuclear technologies. The real story is much more complex: The United States and China have engaged in legitimate and mutually beneficial civil nuclear cooperation while navigating real IP protection challenges and military diversion risks. If China ends up winning the nuclear energy race, the United States should claim no small credit. China has benefited immensely from cooperation with the United States across nuclear energy technologies, safety, security, nonproliferation, export controls, and diplomacy—many diplomats in the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Department of Arms Control were trained in the United States. But the benefit was not unilateral. U.S. nuclear engagement with China over the decades has benefited American public interests—by bringing China into the global nonproliferation regime, giving the U.S. nuclear industry access to the Chinese market, enabling China’s transition to clean energy technologies, and improving the safety of Chinese nuclear power plants in the belief that a nuclear accident anywhere is a nuclear accident everywhere. The United States is more secure when Beijing maintains full control of its nuclear arsenal and fissile material and is not inadvertently aiding weapons proliferation due to lax dual-use export controls. Equally significantly, science and technology diplomacy has built political bridges since the normalization of diplomatic relations in 1979 and has since given the United States transparency and access to China’s civil and defense nuclear complex. Ultimately, the United States never lost sight of its interests. Cooperation has never simply been for cooperation’s sake. The United States could benefit further from a revived, yet cautious, civil nuclear partnership with China that takes IP and dual-use concerns seriously. The partnership could focus, for instance, on precommercial technologies where IP sensitivities are mitigated and potential military utility is limited. If U.S. policymakers decide to suspend the frame of competition, at least in the civil nuclear domain, there is yet the opportunity to restore and reap the residual goodwill from a half century of cooperation. n
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