On October 7, 2024, Mark Cohen, the first Senior Tech Fellow at Asia Society Northern California and the Asia Society Policy Institute, was joined by Kathi Vidal, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), in downtown San Francisco. Vidal shared key takeaways from her recent meeting with Vice-Premier Ding Xuexiang in China. She also outlined three focus areas for the USPTO: addressing the devaluation of IP in some countries, navigating the challenges of patent and IP law with the advent of A.I., and bolstering IP in the Global South. She also spoke about advancing diversity in IP, and the importance of showing up for other countries and engaging in people-to-people relations. Cohen, who has also met with former Vice-Premiers in China, emphasized the complexity of working with the Chinese government, and the importance of preparing the U.S. to navigate with equal complexity and nuance. Other topics that Cohen and Vidal touched upon include trademark protection, AI regulation, teaching youth IP, and the potential of tech clusters.