China-U.S. Cooperation Is Beneficial to Area Security

Chinese President Hu Jintao and U.S. President Barack Obama have just finished their third dialogue in Washington, based on the China-U.S. strategic dialogue mechanism jointly advocated and established by them in April 2009. The two-day meeting resulted in a joint signature of a “U.S.-China comprehensive framework of economic cooperation.” China spoke highly of this agreement, saying that it was a “milestone” in the progress of China-U.S. economic cooperation, and also the most crucial achievement in this round of China-U.S. economic dialogue.

Outside the economic area, the two sides also carried out the first strategic security dialogue, which aimed to enhance mutual trust, control differences and avoid misreading and misjudgment each other’s strategic purpose; China also thought that this was one of the highlights in this round China-U.S. strategic dialogue.

China has reasons for being satisfied with the outcome of this round of dialogue, because it has been talking with the United States regarding issues like trade and business, RMB, human rights and regional security for several months. Fortunately, the China-U.S. relationship has not been reversed; this round of dialogue will further show the two sides’ determination on strengthening cooperation in various aspects.

The United States and China are the world’s first and second largest economies now; when China will exceed the United States to become the world’s largest economy has been a heated issue in U.S. political, business and academic fields. For China, maintaining a positive relationship with the United States is very important for consolidating its power status. China has been worrying that the United States, other western countries and the United States’ Asian allies would restrain its rising ambition. Although the United States constantly entangles with RMB and human rights issues, it has core interests with China, in particular a need for mutual cooperation in regional security.

China’s vice minister of finance, Zhu Guangyao, said that neither China nor the United States has ever signed such a comprehensive cooperation framework, especially one that covers economic issues — among a wide array of others issues —with another country before. China-U.S. strategic dialogue has achieved 48 results; the list involved cooperation in many areas including energy, science and technology, transportation and climate change. China is the second largest trade partner for the United States after Canada. China and the United States are intertwined with each other in various aspects, so they have to attach great importance to one another. 　　

In the last two months, many issues between China and the United States have been surfacing. In March, the U.S. State Department published a report on human rights around the world, in which it pointed out that China had deteriorated human rights and strengthened restriction on Internet freedom. Then China published a report of the U.S. human rights record to counter. Even though this kind of conflict has recently been a routine for the two countries, a series of arrests in China has heated up human rights issues again, and the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even used a strong tone in describing China’s human rights situation as “deplorable,” a statement which obviously showed that the human rights dialogue in Beijing held not long ago hadn’t narrowed the two sides’ distance on this issue.

On the military side, this year the Chinese navy has been undertaking constant activities in Pacific waters. The U.S. Pacific Admiral Willard said last month that since the United States and other countries in the Pacific area began to protest, China has backed down to some extent and the situation in that area was no longer as tense as it was last year.

The news that China’s first aircraft carrier may have sea trials this summer has drawn wide attention, and the U.S. thought that the deployment of this carrier would significantly change people’s attitude toward the Pacific regional balance of power.

On the economic side, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, who will soon be the ambassador to China, criticized China recently for treating the U.S. investment companies in China unfairly, and caused serious damage to related companies. In addition, recently, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce finally ruled that cars and SUVs with a displacement of 2.5 liters or more produced originally in the United States are being subsidized and dumped, which has caused substantial damage to China’s domestic industries.

These kinds of games between China and the U.S. will continue, but as long as the two sides take the interest of the whole into account, and do not deepen differences, they will maintain a secure and stable environment for the world. This will also be another guarantee with long-term significance for the U.S.-China dialogue mechanism and cooperation framework.