Communique offers good lessons, US expert says

The Shanghai Communique, jointly issued by the United States and China 50 years ago, offers valuable lessons applicable to the relationship between the two countries today, a retired senior US diplomat says.

"I'm struck by how enduring what is written there is and how foundational it is still today to the US-China relationship," said Susan Thornton, former acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, at a recent virtual conference co-hosted by the National Committee on US-China Relations.

As an example, Thornton cited a passage from the communique: "The United States believes that the effort to reduce tensions is served by improving communication between countries that have different ideologies, so as to lessen the risks of confrontation through accident, miscalculation or misunderstanding."

"That was in 1972," Thornton, a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School, said. "But it sounds almost exactly like what we say today about the differences that we have and the need to manage them.

"Our officials who were doing this in the past are unfortunately no longer very seriously engaged in doing so. A lot of the mechanisms that were set up to take on these kinds of hard conversations have atrophied."

To avoid crisis and to prevent differences from veering into conflict requires improved communication, Thornton said, and respectful, candid discussion would be valuable for officials on both sides now.

Another lesson to be drawn from the communique is that "countries should treat each other with mutual respect, and be willing to compete peacefully, letting performance be the ultimate judge", she said.

"Now, this speaks to the issue of competition between China and the United States."

The rivalry has always existed, but the communique highlights the importance of mutual respect and peaceful competition, she said.

Healthy competition

The sentiment reflects the expectation for manageable competition that is healthy and fair, she said, and for today's institutions, rules, constraints must be negotiated to have fair competition and an orderly and stable world.

The last part of the Shanghai Communique says the two sides expressed hope that gains achieved during then-president Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972 would open up new prospects for relations between the two countries.

" (The signatories) believed that the normalization of relations between the two countries is not only in the interest of the Chinese and American peoples, but also contributes to the relaxation of tension in Asia and in the world," Thornton said.

The Shanghai Communique set the framework of the US-China relationship, and it has never changed, Thornton said.