Light on the diplomatic horizon

Summit seen as a step forward in putting China-US ties back on the right track

From the beginning of this year China-US relations continued on a downward spiral until a presidential summit took a step in what one expert said was "in the right direction" to guide the most substantial bilateral relationship in the world.

In a virtual meeting on Nov 16, Chinese President Xi Jinping told US President Joe Biden that China and the US should respect each other, coexist peacefully and work together for mutual gains.

Biden said that the US does not seek to change China's system or intend to have a conflict, and reassured Xi on Washington's longstanding one-China policy.

Relations are complicated following years of deterioration and compounded by the pandemic. For each step forward such as the virtual summit or shared concerns over climate change in the past month, the US has taken a step backward, most recently by announcing that it will not send a delegation of government officials to the Winter Olympics in Beijing and Biden's signing into law of the so-called "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act".

But amid the acrimony, veteran China watchers in the US say the Xi-Biden video face-to-face meeting holds signs for gradual improvement, if not a breakthrough, in ties, which they said should emphasize collaboration rather than rivalry.

J. Stapleton Roy, US ambassador to China from 1991 to 1995, said he had hoped the transition to the Biden administration in January heralded a "steady hand" on the wheel of the ship of state that would halt the downward spiral.

However, that has not eventuated, as evidenced by the fact that weeks into the new administration, Biden's top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, endorsed the previous administration's claim that China engaged in genocide in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, an accusation China has branded the "biggest lie of the century".

In addition, hefty tariffs on Chinese imports remain in place, and the tone of the first high-level meeting between the two countries in Anchorage, Alaska, was confrontational, with China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi saying the US "does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength".

However, at the virtual annual gala of the US-China Policy Foundation, a Washington group dedicated to improving US-China relations, Roy said: "The news is not all bleak. The recent virtual summit between President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping was a step in the right direction."

At the least, the meeting improved the tone of US official interactions with China, which had sharply deteriorated, and there were some positive accomplishments, including the two presidents agreeing to meet regularly to guide the relationship and to converse on strategic matters, while identifying climate change and other areas for collaboration.

This year, Blinken described the US-China relationship as "competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be and adversarial when it must be", a framing China has called a "thinly veiled attempt" to contain and suppress it. In the China-US relationship, competition should not be described as a zero-sum game, China's Ambassador to the US, Qin Gang, has said.

The US is emphasizing the competitive aspects of the relationship, while President Xi at the summit said the goal should be "peaceful coexistence", Roy said.

"The strategic goal, however, should be to have cooperation become the dominant factor in the bilateral relationship," Roy said at another webinar last month. That is "the best way" to ensure that US policy serves its own interests and those of regional countries, he said.

Chas W. Freeman, former US assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, told China Daily that while he believes competition is compatible with peaceful coexistence, a rivalry that leaves room for collaboration in theory but not in practice is bound to be fruitless.

"I believe that the order of these three elements of the Sino-American relationship should be altered to put cooperation to mutual advantage first, competition in terms of self-improvement next and make antagonistic confrontation a last resort."

Collaboration, whether in addressing planet-wide problems such as climate change, the development of new technologies, or in mutually beneficial exchanges that are the basis for trade brings the maximum benefit to each side, he said.