China, U.S. need to explore right way of interaction

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Feb 01, 2023, 10:58 ET

BEIJING, Feb. 1, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- A report from People's Daily: Since Chinese President Xi Jinping had a meeting with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden in Bali, Indonesia last year, Chinese and American diplomatic and national security teams, as well as financial and trade teams have maintained close contact to follow up on the major issues the two leaders discussed and implement the important common understandings they came to.

The international society hopes that the two major countries can make joint efforts to find the right way of interaction so as to serve as an anchor of stability in the fast-changing world and play a major role in promoting global economic recovery after the pandemic, tackling climate change and solving regional hotspot issues.

Stephen Roach, a senior fellow at Yale University, recently warned that the two countries' "ability to tackle these enormous and important global issues will be severely constrained" if they remain conflicted.

Xi said that it would be problematic if two major countries like China and the U.S. do not have overarching principled common understandings. Only with principles can there be a direction, and only with a direction can the two sides properly handle differences and expand cooperation.

During the meeting between Xi and Biden, the two presidents agreed on the importance of working out the guiding principles for China-U.S. relations, and further explored the topic with constructive discussions.

The Chinese side proposed that China and the U.S. should respect each other, coexist in peace and pursue win-win cooperation, and work together to ensure that China-U.S. relations move forward on the right course without losing direction or speed, still less having a collision.

Mutual respect is an important experience drawn from past exchanges between the two sides, as well as a pre-condition of the China-U.S. relations getting back to the right track.

China and the U.S. are two major countries with different histories, cultures, social systems and development paths. There have been differences in the past, and there will be more in the future. But such differences should not become an obstacle to developing China-U.S. relations.

China respects the social system of the U.S., and always hopes that the U.S. will stay open and confident, keep growing and make progress. Likewise, the U.S. should respect China's development path.

It is the two sides' mutual and fundamental interest to prevent conflict and confrontation and achieve peaceful coexistence. China remains committed to an independent foreign policy of peace and to its foreign policy goals of upholding world peace and promoting common development.

Win-win cooperation is the true narrative of China-U.S. relations in the past half a century, and should remain the goal that the two countries both pursue.

China and the U.S. have extensive common interests in bilateral and multilateral fields, and they can and should cooperate in many areas. Their cooperation list should be extended, not cut down.

According to China's General Administration of Customs, the total trade between China and the U.S. reached a record high of 5.05 trillion yuan ($748.5 billion) in 2022. It fully demonstrates that what the Chinese and American people desire is cooperation driven by win-win outcomes.

During the Bali meeting, Biden said the U.S. side has no intention to seek "decoupling" from China or to halt China's economic development.

The international society is expecting China and the U.S. to jointly cope with global challenges. Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson recently said in an article on Foreign Affairs that "without a stable relationship between the U.S. and China, where cooperation on shared interests is possible, the world will be a very dangerous and less prosperous place."

Exploring the right way to get along with each other is a common expectation of the people in the two countries and the rest of the world as well.

SOURCE People's Daily