China-U.S. cooperation is the will of the people
Note: The following article is taken from the Chinese-language "Commentaries on International Affairs".
The Washington Post published an open letter to United States President Donald Trump and members of Congress on Wednesday entitled "China is not an enemy”. The open letter was co-signed by around one hundred people from American academic, diplomatic, military, and business circles. The letter expressed concern about the growing deterioration of the U.S. relationship with China, which the signatories believe does not serve the U.S. interests. The letter says there is no single consensus in Washington endorsing an overall adversarial stance toward China, as some people believe exists.
[Photo: IC]
The letter says that China is not an economic enemy, and that the United States has taken many actions that have directly contributed to the downward spiral of the bilateral relationship. It points out that the U.S. attempts to treat China as an enemy and to decouple it from the global economy will damage the standing of the United States in the world and undermine the economic interests of all nations, and that China’s engagement in the international system is essential to the system’s survival and to effective action on common problems such as climate change. The interests of the United States, it says, are best served by restoring its ability to compete effectively in a changing world and by working alongside other nations and international organizations, rather than by promoting a counterproductive effort to undermine and contain China.
The five authors of this open letter are M. Taylor Fravel, a professor of political science at MIT; J. Stapleton Roy, a distinguished scholar at the Wilson Center and a former U.S. ambassador to China; Michael D. Swaine, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Susan A. Thornton, a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center and a former acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs; and Ezra Vogel, a professor emeritus at Harvard University. Among them are experts and scholars engaged in the study of China-U.S. relations, and political figures with rich diplomatic experience. They reached a consensus with the letter’s many signatories. These signatories are Americans from all walks of life who believe that hostility towards China is not in the interest of their country. Their voices point to the policy of confrontation with China being advocated by a handful of hawkish politicians in the United States as being a minority view.
The open letter also shows that the outcomes of the meeting in Osaka between President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump are in line with the will of the people in both countries. The Chinese and U.S. leaders reached an agreement to continue to advance bilateral ties based on coordination, cooperation, and stability, and agreed to restart the trade talks on the basis of equality and mutual respect.
As the letter noted, China is not an economic enemy of the United States. The two countries account for 40 percent of the world’s GDP, and they have benefited greatly from each other’s growing prosperity. This is why the decision by Washington to impose tariffs on imports from China is a loss for both sides. And they’re clearly not having the desired effect: According to data released by the US Department of Commerce on Wednesday, the U.S. trade deficit with China increased by 12.2 percent to 30.2 billion U.S. dollars in May. The tariffs are not the magic bullet for the country’s economic problems that some may have hoped.
The negotiating teams from the two countries will now turn their attention to overcoming the remaining sticking points, which include the decision by the United States to unilaterally hike tariffs on imports from China. These additional levies will need to be scrapped as part of any deal reached between the two countries. Reaching a final agreement will require determined effort by both sides, but if the negotiations can move forward in the spirit of equality and mutual respect, both countries will be a winner.