Scholar points to avenues for cooperation and understanding in US-China relationship

谢淑丽（Susan Shirk）

富达平台-加大当代研究中心学术委员会联席主席

圣地亚哥加州大学二十一世纪中国研究学术主任

前美国负责东亚事务副助理国务卿

A: The greatest achievement is the climate agreement. It’s not only of global significance or significance to the two countries, but also shows that when there is political will, the two countries can cooperate. So this gives us inspiration that we can get back on the cooperative path in other areas too.

But I guess I have to say quite frankly, if you look at not the long list of cooperations, which we do every time, but the public statements by the two sides, they reveal a big gap we have in our stance on many important issues.

A: When we talk about the Thucydides Trap, we are referring to the historical pattern that a rising power and an incumbent power have a great deal of difficulty maintaining a peaceful relationship during what we call a power transition.

But I think for many years the US and China demonstrated that they can overcome this so-called trap. I don’t believe that it’s destiny or inevitable that China as the rising power and the US, the current power, inevitably will come to war. I don’t agree with the analysis of people like John Mearsheimer (a hawkish thinker on China) and his followers.

First of all, the two countries are very economically interdependent, and they don’t benefit from harming each other. Instead, they need each other. So this is very different from the US-Soviet relationship during the Cold War.

Secondly, I think we have shown... that we can manage to get along with each other, be cautious and respectful to one another. That in my view is attributed to the statesmanship of the Chinese side and the American side.

A:Our militaries are working hard to improve communication as well as domain awareness in order to prevent inadvertent, accidental crises. Both sides want to avoid that and have made some pretty good progress in the past few years.

What’s missing, for example, is that we have navies and air forces talking to each other about this, but we need to include the Coast Guard vessels into the communication protocol and crisis prevention.

A: By and large I think it is a positive thing, and the US government made a big mistake by treating the AIIB in the context of US-China rivalry, which made us look pretty pathetic and insecure.

China’s initiatives in its international economic diplomacy — including AIIB, One Belt One Road — I don’t see anything wrong with them. It’s inevitable that as China revives itself, it’s ambitious to play a leadership role.

That’s a good thing. I’d much rather see that ambition being expressed in economic and diplomatic terms.

We’d make a big mistake if we treat all this as a big zero-sum game. Of course in some areas we may not have the same approach, but that’s okay. I don’t think that kind of economic or diplomatic competition gives us anything to worry about.

本文转载自Shanghai Daily,  September 28, 2016, Wednesday