China's international status grows with maturing foreign policy
( 2002-02-26 15:38 ) (9 )

The international status of China is growing with the maturing of its foreign policy and the confidence in dealing with the West, said a Time Magazine report on Tuesday.

In the past year the country has joined the World Trade Organization, been tapped to host the 2008 Olympic Games and seen its men's soccer team qualify for the first time for the World Cup Finals, the reports said.

"Those achievements are sources of immense pride in China, for which Jiang's government and the Communist Party is given credit," said the report.

Along with China's arrival on the international stage, the Sino-US relations become increasingly stable, said the report.

The fact that the presidents of the two giant nations can feel comfortable enough to politely disagree on a number of points in their joint press conference last week in Beijing is a sign of the maturing of the Sino-US relationship, the magazine pointed out.

The two sides can comfortably face their differences on issues such as human rights and US military action against Iraq, showing that the two men is more able than ever to accommodate differences.

Sino-US relations haven't always been easy; tensions over the spy-plane incident, US arms sales to Taiwan and the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade all resulted in difficult times.

"But Jiang has been able to smooth over the tensions and keep the lines of communication with the US open," the report praised.

"Washington, for its part, has worked to move China policy beyond crisis-management. The most important step: Taking annual reviews of the relationship off the political calendar. Until the Clinton administration changed this a couple of years ago, there would be an escalation of tension when China's Most Favored Nation trade status came up for review and the US threatened sanctions over human rights abuses or intellectual-property piracy or the sale of weapons. None of those concerns has gone away, and important differences remain. But they're now being pursued in a less confrontational way," the report said.