This year has seen China and the United States make measured efforts to stabilize relations after their presidents reset the bilateral dynamic at a summit in late 2023. That stabilization, however fragile or fruitful, may face daunting challenges in 2025, with some analysts saying it is a matter of hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.

The China-US relationship, after going through ups and downs over the past four years, has remained "stable on the whole", President Xi Jinping told US President Joe Biden in Lima, Peru, on Nov 16, a year after they met in San Francisco, where they both stated a willingness to achieve a relaxation of tensions.

At the Lima summit, Biden reiterated his government's stance that it does not support "Taiwan independence", its alliances are not targeted at China, and it does not seek conflict with China.

He also lauded the "tangible progress" Beijing and Washington have made in military-to-military relations, counternarcotics, law enforcement, artificial intelligence, climate change and people-to-people exchanges.

But in action, the Biden administration has approved a litany of arms sales, or potential ones, to Taiwan in recent months, ranging in value from $200 million to $2 billion.

Biden's top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said on Dec 18 that China's "complaining" about Washington's efforts to "bring these other countries into some kind of alliance against China… is the most powerful evidence of the success that we've had".

On the economic front, the outgoing Biden administration this month alone decided to raise tariffs on solar wafers, polysilicon and some tungsten products from China, and, in the third round of sweeping technology restrictions in three years on Chinese companies, it placed nearly 140 more on its Entity List for national security concerns, a move that China said overstretches the national security concept.