US urged to focus on long-term interests

Mobilizing support

The days leading up to the US election in November have heard increasing China-bashing rhetoric that experts said both the incumbent US president Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden have employed to drum up support in their bases.

But throughout the time, there have been also voices trying to present a cooling reasoning.

For example, Robert B. Zoellick, US deputy secretary of state and US trade representative in the early 2000s, said the new cold warriors expunge the successes of past US cooperation with China.

"But it is flat wrong to suggest that working with China has not served US interests," he wrote for The Wall Street Journal on May 18. "Self-deception will lead to dangerous diplomacy."

The strategic choices that the world's top two economies make will shape the contours of the emerging global order, Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong said in an essay on the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.

"It is natural for big powers to compete. But it is their capacity for cooperation that is the true test of statecraft, and it will determine whether humanity makes progress on global problems such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, and the spread of infectious diseases," Lee said in "The Endangered Asian Century: America, China, and the Perils of Confrontation" published in the July/August issue of the publication.

Liu Yinmeng in Los Angeles contributed to this story.