US should face up to reality of China

The China-US Asia-Pacific Consultations held in Beijing this week was inaugurated in 2011 in Honolulu, Hawaii, to reflect the commitment by the two nations' leaders to build a positive, cooperative and comprehensive relationship. The proper phrase for which is building a new type of major country relationship.

However, rhetoric and policies in Washington often do not reflect such a goal.

The words commonly used in Washington regarding China are how to manage China's rise. Such a mindset is based on the premise that China is the villain, the aggressor and the problem, while the United States is the good cop, the defender and savior. The supposition is China needs to be lectured.

The validity of such a proposition is unfounded. It is true that China has been learning a great deal from the rest of the world, including the US, Europe and Japan, over the past 35 years of economic reform and opening-up. But to tell China that it needs to be managed certainly does not give enough respect to China, let alone treat China as an equal.

Despite all the tensions China has with some of its neighbors over maritime territorial and historical issues in recent years, China remains a key trade partner, if not the largest, for most of these countries. Therefore, it has as large a stake as anyone else not to let the situation get out of control.

To assume China's rise is destined to be disruptive to the world is just fiction. Looking back over the last 35 years, China has done nothing anywhere near as damaging to the world as the US has with its meddling in various countries and its invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. The world is still living with the consequences of the US' actions and will continue to do so for years, even decades, to come.

What is known is that China's rise has contributed greatly to the economic prosperity of not just the Chinese people, but people all over the world, including people in the US.