New think tank can help in diffusing China-US tensions

APEC summit has ended without a formal leaders' statement for the first time because of China-US divisions over trade. The two countries have been engaged in a tit-for-tat trade war for months and revealed competing visions for the region at the summit.

After US 2018 midterm elections, both organizations and companies in China and US will have to navigate the new political environment carefully to advance their policy objectives. Although the new US Congress is unlikely to change the direction of its economic relationship with China, the plight of farmers in US who are facing their worst economic year in a long time might have some impact on pushing individual members of Congress to seek a more moderate course.

In the same time, Chinese leading think tank is continuing to approach positively to shaping the bilateral relations at a time of unusually high tensions along all fronts, with top Chinese scholars from the Charhar Institute planning to attend China-US public diplomacy dialogue in Atlanta from January 16-19 Former US president Jimmy Carter and a number of senior US experts have confirmed their participation.

Recently, the National Committee of the China-US Relations has been founded in Beijing, with the support from the Founding Chairman of the Charhar Institute, Han Fangming, who is also vice-chairman of the Committee of Foreign Affairs of the CPPCC National Committee and deputy editor-in-chief of Public Diplomacy Quarterly.

The committee has been established at a time when China-US relations are facing more challenges. Even one year ago, most Chinese diplomats and scholars had not foreseen the uncertainty that the relationship faces now. The mission of the committee is to ensure that informed engagement remains the cornerstone of China-US relations.

Chinese mainstream think tanks roughly agree that the essence of the conflict between China and the US is not a simple trade issue. The essence of the trade conflict is actually just an iceberg of the global strategic competition between a new rising power in the world and an incumbent power. The trade tension is for containing the rise of the new power, for stopping China from challenging the US' hegemony in the future. And it is for this purpose, the US has taken actions not only on the trade area, but also on politics, military, geopolitics, culture and even education.

Bruno Wu, vice-chairman of the committee, said, "From a longer-term development perspective, it is essentially the competition between China Model and the Western Model. The core of the competition is on competing for the rule-making power of the political and economic globalization in the future".

Committee member, Tsinghua professor Zhao Kejing said the co-existence of competitiveness and cooperation between China and US will continue. He said the most important thing at present is not to predict how bad bilateral relations will become, but to solve problems.

Many scholars believe that only after analyzing and understanding the essence of the trade conflict can we control the whole situation by deepening the reforms and opening-up.

President Xi has said: "The metal itself must be hard to be turned into iron." China still needs to develop itself quickly, making itself powerful to meet any challenges, including the trade conflict.

For the new-phase challenges, the newly founded committee bears a historical and also an unprecedented responsibility. It needs all its committee members to be innovative to prepare for the unforeseen challenges. History is sure to be a good guide. More human exchange and cultural exchange may also be good ways of public diplomacy. Yet new working mechanisms are urgently needed to be built up now in the mid of the hot war on trade. This is also maybe the real reason for the founding of the committee.

Chinese scholars also believe that a comprehensive approach to China-US policy must be based not only on Chinese interests, but on an understanding of Trump administration's strategy as well. And it is believed by the Chinese committee members that more non-government exchanges, including the exchanges between the scholars and students, will be most important for the improvement of the China-US relations.

The efforts from Chinese think tank remind us the legacy of US counterpart in past five decades, such as Chinese ping pong team visit in 1972. US former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, whose trips paved the way for the ground breaking 1972 summit between former US president Richard Nixon, former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, and chairman Mao Zedong, as well as the formalization of relations between the two countries, once said: "A strong relationship between USA and China is vital to geopolitical security".

"A glass is easily broken, but difficult to repair," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, in reference to the current state of China-US relations. Think tanks in both sides worry that without pre-emptive action, the status quo could descend into a true world polarizing cold war, with all the negative ramifications for the region's peace, stability, economics, and internal politics. More worryingly, this cold war could eventually tip into a "hot war." Observers believe that even if present differences can ultimately be resolved, there's no going back to how things were. The glass may not yet have shattered, but it is cracked，it is the time to reshape the relations by the wisdom of think tank from China and United States.

Mrs. Faten Bahjat Zanaa is senior fellow from New Zealand OCEANIA Silk Road Network which was established in March 2017 during Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's visit to New Zealand.