On September 6 and 7, 2020, the Sub-session on International Relations of the 2020 Taihe Civilizations Forum was held online due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Over the two days, more than 200 guests from home and abroad conducted comprehensive and meaningful exchanges and discussions on the theme “China-U.S. relations and their impact on the world”. The following are the main points guests from home and abroad made while discussing these issues.

 

 

Rashid Alimov, senior fellow of Taihe Institute, stated that any complex situation or tension between China and the U.S. could exert a negative impact on the global economy. In the face of the common threats to humanity, China and the U.S., as major responsible countries, should show leadership and strengthen interaction and cooperation instead of exacerbating tensions.

 

Cui Liru, former president of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, pointed out that as the political mutual trust needed in an effort to stabilize the relations between China and the U.S. has almost gone, the two countries need to manage their strategic competition in an unstable relations situation, and establish a framework for the strategic balance based on changing realities. Two routes may lead to this result. First, policymakers of both sides could improve their relations with positive ideas and policies; second, China-U.S. relations might constantly deteriorate and lead to increasingly negative consequences, which could in turn get the two sides back on the track of constructive dialogue and the reestablishment of balance for a better future.

 

Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, believed that China and the U.S. have become the new “poles” of the international political system and have focused more on their national interests due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has accelerated the “decoupling” and the formation of a “bipolar system” between the two countries. There could be more conflicts and disputes between China and the U.S. with contributory factors including, among others, trade policy, nationalism, the Hong Kong, South China Sea and Taiwan issues. The new “bipolar system” might increase tensions between China and the U.S. for a short period of time, but it could also lead to more stable and secure China-U.S. relations in the future.

 

Stephen Orlins, president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, pointed out that the restrictions imposed by strategic competition between China and the U.S. and the increase in expenditure would ultimately harm the people of both countries. Both China and the U.S. should adjust their mutually hostile policies, reduce confrontation, put strategic competition aside, and take mutually beneficial action. He added that China did not pose an existential threat to the U.S. Characterizing China as a strategic competitor would harm the future development of the U.S.

 

Wang Xiangsui, senior fellow of Taihe Institute, believed that China and the U.S. should recognize that there had been strategic competition between them, but that this had not yet turned into the mutual isolationism of a “Cold War”. China and the U.S. need to set out rules to refrain from behavior which might cause a clash of civilizations, ethnic confrontation, full-scale “decoupling”, weaponization of finance and supply chains, political attacks aimed at subverting the government, and intervention in each other’s sovereign and territorial disputes as well as racial conflicts. In this way, the two countries could achieve “competitive co-existence”.

 

Zou Ming, vice president and chief editor of Phoenix New Media, said that in spite of all kinds of oppressive and restrictive moves by the U.S., especially its military provocations and the attempt to provoke nationalism in China, a war is avoidable if the two countries could retain their willpower.

 

Susan Thornton, the director of the Forum on Asia-Pacific Security of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, saw the systemic differences between China and the U.S., from the perspective of exceptionalism, as a major obstacle to cooperation. There had been no clear sign of war between the two countries, and the prospects for future cooperation remain promising. But China should also take a hard look at its policies and behavior, and if it does not want to fall into the “Thucydides trap”, it should think about how it could help end the standoff and make the transition, in a similar way to how the U.S. helped China to integrate into the international system.

 

Evan Medeiros, Senior Fellow at Georgetown University, pointed out that Trump’s China policy is increasingly disconnected from the mainstream policy community in the U.S. In particular, the Secretary of State Pompeo’s speech at the Nixon Library several weeks ago does not have widespread support in either Democratic or Republican party circles. But Trump’s China policy is also disconnected from the business community, who focus much more on risk mitigation than decoupling and they don’t want confrontations in the economic relationship.

 

Wang Wen, executive dean of Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, suggested that China and the U.S. need to work out a Fourth or even Fifth Joint Communique to establish the bottom line of China-U.S. relations. Namely, there should be no war.

 

Vladimir Yakunin, chairman at Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute, noted that the current reality of international architecture is a transition from the dominance of a Western-centric model to a new model that should take into account the needs of the developing world and its cultural diversity. In contrast to a model of confrontation, we must follow the principles and the paradigm of the dialogue of civilizations, which allow us to conduct an open dialogue and learn from each other.

 

Susan Elliott, the president and CEO of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP), said that the increased tensions and breakdown of relations between the U.S. and China would have a negative effect not just on countries in the Asia Pacific region, but around the world. China and the U.S. should stop the “blame game” on the COVID-19 pandemic, resume trade and economic talks, and reduce restrictions on each other’s citizens and the expulsion of journalists.

 

Men Jing, senior fellow of Taihe Institute, pointed out that despite Donald Trump’s disruption, the U.S. and the EU still have a relatively strong transatlantic partnership. Moreover, the EU is skeptical about China’s growing influence, and many problems have arisen in their relationship. China-U.S. relations are fundamentally different from China-EU relations, as the EU views China as a partner for development and cooperation rather than a strategic competitor. Although the U.S. had stepped up efforts to harness the EU to its efforts to contain China, the EU has not joined the U.S. in this. For EU countries, China is an important economic and trade partner. In the future, China and the EU need to enhance in-depth exchanges, understand each other’s major concerns and strengthen cooperation in various fields.

 

Geoffrey Harris, former official of the European Parliament, said that whilst China is a key economic partner, it is also “a systemic rival that seeks to promote an alternative model of governance.” There is room for China-EU cooperation in areas such as multilateralism and climate change. In a world of different values and interests, multilateralism and organized globalization require trust. That is what’s missing nowadays and all concerned parties must act to reverse this tendency. China must analyse the reasons for the growing disenchantment with China in European public opinion and not react with disinformation. In the meantime, Europe has firmly rejected the China-U.S. blame game over the pandemic.

 

Qian Feng, senior fellow of Taihe Institute, believed that deteriorating China-U.S. relations would make it even harder to stabilize China-India relations. After China-India border conflicts arose, the U.S. had been reinforcing its political, diplomatic and military courting of India. One priority for India’s future foreign policy is to stay strategically independent, seek the help of the U.S. while not relying on it, and conduct China-India relations in a practical but unfriendly way.

 

Cheng Yonghua, senior fellow of Taihe Institute and executive vice president of the China-Japan Friendship Association, believed that although Japan and Korea are allies of the U.S., the relations between them are quite complicated. The resignation of Shinzo Abe as Prime Minister would not significantly affect U.S.-Japan relations. Japan, while continuing to ally itself with the U.S., would handle its relations with neighboring countries cautiously. Many foreign-owned enterprises, especially those in Asia, have maintained sound development in China despite the Trump administration’s encouragement of economic decoupling from China.

 

Thomas Fingar, a researcher at Stanford University, believed that the concept of the “Cold War” is not sustainable. Problems between China and the U.S. did not originate from a single person or country, but from different systems and structures. The two countries should work together to ascertain the source of problems so as to better address them. At present, it seems that the Chinese are more worried about the deterioration of China-U.S. bilateral relations than Americans are, and to a large extent blame the worsening relationship on the Trump administration. But these issues need to be tackled by both countries, rather than the U.S. alone.

 

Wu Hailong, chair of the Sub-session on International Relations of the 2020 Taihe Civilizations Forum, Lead Research Fellow in International Relations, and President of the China Public Diplomacy Association, stated in summary that some consensus had been reached in the Sub-session. First, China-U.S. relations, as the most important bilateral relationship in the world, are critical to the well-being of the two countries and the rest of the world and would affect world peace and stability. Second, conflicts between China and the U.S. are disasters for both countries and the entire world. Therefore, measures must be taken to prevent this dangerous situation from arising and bring China-U.S. relations back to a healthy, stable and correct trajectory. Third, China and the U.S. are supposed to tackle their problems through dialogue. Conducting dialogue is a wise choice for resolving differences, a proper way to establish mutual trust, and the optimal method for reducing misjudgment. Without dialogue, no problems could be solved. Fourth, both China and the U.S. need to take action, control differences, and handle divergences reasonably, instead of creating or exacerbating differences themselves. China-U.S. relations need to adhere to the right trajectory in a controlled manner. Fifth, China and the U.S. should cooperate more, especially in this battle against the COVID-19 pandemic and promote economic recovery in the post-pandemic era. Cooperation also needs to be conducted in solving global and regional hotspot issues. Sixth, we should be more cautious and ensure that China-U.S. relations do not exert a negative influence on third parties, in particular, forcing other countries to choose sides, which is something they hate to see and to do.