Obama Improves Sino-U.S. Relations

Wenzhao Tao, researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and chairman of the Association of the History of Sino-U.S. Relations, was a guest of Qiangguo Forum today. He believes that Obama has made a perfect transition for Sino-U.S. relations. Since the beginning of this year, Sino-U.S. relations have steadily improved. And after Obama visits China, increased strength will be poured into Sino-U.S. relations.

Wenzhao Tao said that the policy towards China has been like a soccer ball kicked between Democrats and Republicans during U.S. presidential election periods: if the Democrats came into power, Republicans would attack the the Democrat’s [China] policy and vice versa. But things changed last year—during the election we didn’t doubt that Sino-U.S. relations would keep improving, and we were right.

Tao also said that during the past 30 years, each new administration and new president has reconsidered the policy towards China. This would usually affect Sino-U.S. relations, sometimes even overturning them for several months or several years. It was worst in the 1990s, when Clinton took over from George Bush Sr. For more than three years, from 1993 to 1995, Sino-U.S. relations were unstable and unsafe. Clinton did not decide to establish stable relations with China until 1996, when his term was almost over. But [since the transition] from Bush Jr., the Republican, to President Obama, the Democrat, relations have been improving perfectly.

Tao [put forth] that we have developed over 60 bilateral platforms on which to cooperate [and that these platforms] have been accepted by President Obama. [Obama] has also combined U.S. and economic strategy towards China to make the China-U.S. Strategic Economic Dialogue, which was held for the first time in Washington in July and was a success. The presidents of the two countries have met twice this year—once was at the Summit on Financial Markets on April 1st and the other was at the U.S. General Assembly in September. On April 1st, President Hu Jintao and President Obama agreed on Sino-U.S. relations as positive, cooperative and comprehensive, which determined the direction that the two countries would take.