At the Manhattan headquarters of JPMorgan Chase, the United States Treasury Secretary and a senior Chinese economic official are set to meet — a quiet but deliberate gesture in one of the world's most consequential and contested relationships. That both governments have agreed to a public, structured dialogue at a storied financial institution suggests a shared, if cautious, preference for conversation over confrontation. In an era when US-China economic ties are defined as much by rivalry as by interdependence, the willingness to sit across a table carries meaning beyond whatever is said at i