Sino-US Relations Are Increasingly Moving Towards Maturity
Sino-US Relations Are Increasingly Moving Towards Maturity (中美关系日益走向成熟)
By Yang Kaidong (杨凯冬)
Original Publication:
Study Times (学习时报）
Translated by Anton Lee Wishik II for Mei-Zhong Guanxi
On August 8th, President Bush attended the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. This was the last time that he would be visiting China as president. Looking back on Sino-US relations eight years ago, one realizes that in those eight years, a large change has occurred in Sino-US relations. Substantive changes have occurred in certain aspects of America’s China policy, and Sino-US relations have already entered a new age. This kind of transformation is both strategic and long-term.
Before Bush took office, he had criticized the Clinton-era China policy as excessively weak and had positioned Sino-US relations as one of ‘strategic competitors.’ Not long after Bush assumed the presidency, the ‘Plane Collision Incident’ caused Sino-US relations to fall into a tense state. At one point, Bush had classified China as the same as Iraq and Russia as one of America’s supposed three enemies. The 9/11 terrorist attacks became an unexpected turning point in Sino-US relations. For one thing, the incident caused the Bush government to shift its attention on foreign policy to anti-terrorism. For another thing, within five hours of 9/11, the Chinese national chairman at the time, Jiang Zemin, took the initiative in getting a message to Bush in which he condemned terrorism and expressed compassion and sympathy and thus brought the two nations’ strategic relations closer together. Afterwards, the opening in 2003 of six party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program and the opening of the Sino-US Strategic Economic Dialogue at the end of 2006 caused bilateral relations to enter a period of stable development.
The manifestation of stable development in Sino-US relations lies in several aspects listed below:
First, the effects of interaction between the national leaders have been outstanding. The frequency of interaction between the leaders of the two countries has deepened understanding, promoted friendship, and has not only established a foundation for long-term development in bilateral relations, but in responding to a series of concrete issues, has also clearly shown the path to follow and has ensured the basic direction towards stable cooperation in Sino-US relations will not be wavered from.
Second, the two nations have set up new cooperative mechanisms and platforms. After the continuation of mechanisms such as the Sino-US Strategic Dialogue and the US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, the leaders of the two nations proposed a new mechanism, the Strategic Economic Dialogue. It is both a beneficial supplement to the mechanisms described above and also effectively links them together. By going from the strategic level to taking hold of the steady development of bilateral economic relations and going from economic issues to beginning to push forward the improvement of strategic relations, this mechanism has been brought to bear with an important use.
Third, military exchanges have been completely restored. Rumsfeld was able to achieve a China visit, and Guo Boxiong (郭伯雄) succeeded in visiting the US. The two militaries cooperated in launching their first search and rescue exercise at sea. Contact between members of the two militaries became increasingly frequent. From different sides, it has been shown that Sino-US relations have now completely come out from under the shadow of the ‘Plane Collision Incident’ and are moving towards establishing mutual trust and a new era of striving for cooperation.
Fourth, cooperation between China and the US on major international issues has become closer and more effective. Among these issues, the coordination and cooperation involving the ‘North Korean nuclear crisis’ have been the most striking.
Fifth, China and the US have mutually stabilized the state of affairs in the Taiwan Strait. The US policy on Taiwan has been positively put into play in reigning in the power of ‘Taiwan independence’ to provoke and in promoting peace in the Taiwan Strait. The US position of ‘preventing independence’ has had an awesome effect on the power of the Taiwan independence movement and has brought about a situation in which both China and the US are jointly containing Taiwan independence.
With the Chinese economy having gone through close to 30 years of rapid growth and with long-term political stability, the US has gradually come to realize that China is not a force bent on breaking the international system, but is a positive collaborator. There is now no market for ‘The Collapse of China’ which had been all the rage in the US at the end of the last century. While the US’s strategic decisions regarding China became pragmatic and moderate, at the same time, a corresponding transformation was taking place in China’s strategic decisions regarding the US. In recent years, with the increase in Sino-US bilateral exchanges and the deepening of mechanisms for dialogue, both China and the US firmly believe that the continuous management of security issues within bilateral relations is no longer the primary issue. Each side would not use military measures to solve differences in bilateral relations. Current Sino-US relations are really exactly like how State Council Vice Premier Wang Qishan (王岐山) described them during the fourth round of the Strategic Economic Dialogue, “For both China and the US, each one could not separate from the other.” Scholars have described current relations as ‘a form of complicated mutual dependence.’
As a result of economic globalization, Sino-US mutual dependence ultimately displays the formation domestically of a collective interest and structure for mutual dependence in each country. Bilateral relations have already surpassed that of governments representing the countries relations and have developed to the point where the association between the two societies is increasingly close. Both China’s industrial exports to the US and the US’s investment and trading enterprises in China have become mainstays in each country’s domestic economy. For both China and the US, the degree of economic dependence is continuously increasing. Whether seen from the Chinese viewpoint or the US viewpoint, the situation is the same. For example, in looking at trade between the two countries, Chinese exports to the US are trending upwards both as a proportion of total foreign exports and as a proportion of China’s GDP. Also, for American exports to China, they are similarly trending upwards as a proportion of total foreign exports and US GDP.
Ten years ago, the main axis of the US’s China policy was ‘contact’ and through contact, the entrance of China into the international system. At the time, America’s greatest worry was that China would reject the international system, go its own way, and challenge the existing international system. Now, economic globalization has pushed Sino-US relations to a strategic level of mutual dependence. According to former Deputy Secretary of State Zoellick, by joining most international mechanisms, China is already a member of the international system. This past April, during the welcoming ceremony for Chairman Hu Jintao’s visit to the US, President Bush stated that “As stakeholders in the international system, our two countries share numerous strategic interests.” In today’s international system, both China and the US benefit from progress in the stability and globalization of the international order. Maintaining the stable development of the existing order and progress is in accordance with both countries basic interest. Currently, the US is the greatest beneficiary in the international economic order and needs to maintain the existing international economic order. Also, as China is an up and coming country with a market economy, the contributions of her stable development to the international economy are increasingly great, and its right to speak on the international economic order is continuously increasing. China and the US have already become the two ‘engines’ leading the global economic lifeline. They are generating a very important influence on the global economy. It’s just like Chairman Hu Jintao has said, “Sino-US relations have already greatly exceeded the bilateral category and increasingly contain global significance.”
Although the Bush government’s foreign policy was put into effect under a banner of unilateralism, military force, and democracy promotion, the results it brought were an increase in Anti-American sentiment and a rise in the power of extremism. Thus, the US became increasingly isolated globally. But what should be noted is that entering the twenty-first century, Sino-US relations have developed more stably than before, and this is the result of the two countries’ mutual effort. For one thing, all along China has been unwavering in persisting in developing relations with the US in a constructively cooperative manner and all along has grasped the general Sino-US situation from a high strategic level and long-term view. For another thing, even with the departure of Zoellick, the US didn’t let the tea get cold with his departure, and ‘responsible stakeholder’ remained at the core of the US’s relatively vigorous new strategic framework on China. Not only did Paulson and other new members of the ‘China clique’ carry on and develop things, they also repeatedly received Bush’s personal assurance and support. This is an important sign of Sino-US relations increasingly moving towards maturity.
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[...] is an excerpt from an article by Yang Kaidong (杨凯冬), which was recently published in Study Times (学习时报) – [...]
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