US think tank urges Trump to promote ties with China

SAN DIEGO - A task force report released recently in Washington has urged US President Donald Trump to reexamine his policy toward China and promote US-China ties.

Conducted by the Asia Society Center on US-China Relations and the University of California San Diego 21st Century China Center, the report gathered opinions of around 20 bipartisan experts, including former government officials, scholars and think tank researchers.

It said that the overall trend of the bilateral relations between the United States and China, which established ties in 1979, has been "reasonably positive and encouraging."

Susan Shirk, co-chair of the task force, said during a conference on Monday in San Diego that China has become a more influential country with many sources of leverage since the global financial crisis in 2008.

The report tries to give suggestions on how the United States could move forward "in a way that would preserve the positive benefit of a stable US-China relation," and "better preserve US interest in some areas, where we feel that things are not working as well as they once did," said Shirk.

But it remains to be seen if this report will affect the new administration's policy.

"President Trump is not known for reading a lot of papers. So I have no illusion he's going to read our report," Shirk said. "But I do think that other people in his administration will read the report or have already read the report."

The report specifies six issues that the new administration should address immediately, which include working with China to halt the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's nuclear and missile programs, sustaining and broadening US-China collaboration on climate change and reaffirming US commitments to Asia.

Regarding the fact that US President Trump signed to withdraw his country from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Shirk said: "I think it's a huge mistake."

She explained that the task force originally intended to recommend the administration work collaboratively with China and develop a way for China to join the TPP. "Now we don't have that destination. It's hard to find a substitute of the TPP," she said.

Other key topics discussed in the report include trade and investment relations, maritime disputes and cyber security.

Cyber security has been a hidden threat to many countries including China, which has pledged to cooperate with the United States to fight cybercrime.

"As far as I know that's actually been going pretty well," Shirk said. "I think that's a great example of how the United States and China through frank negotiation can address a very difficult topic, make progress, and move forward."

The task force's concern about this crucial relationship also comes from President Trump's performance since his inauguration in January.

Orville Schell, the other co-chair of the task force, said he thinks the first four weeks of the new administration have been "pretty chaotic."

"We've seen a lot of statements that had to be countermanded, and it's very hard to know exactly what his coherent point of view is," Schell said.

Earlier this month, Trump agreed to honor the one-China policy, the political basis of China-US relations in the past decades. The decision was applauded by the report.

"No national interest is furthered by abandoning or conditioning the one-China policy," and "the new administration should be mindful of lessons from the past," said the report.

The task force also stressed in the report that "a rising power need not become an adversary of the established power," and that the two countries should collaborate and share responsibility.

"Now the real problem is those issues which divide us. We have to start working on some of those," Schell said.