Open the trade doors

PANG ZHONGYING

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership are two major mechanisms that the US is trying to promote to continue dominating global trade rules. On the other side of the Pacific, China is trying to influence global trade governance through its Belt and Road Initiative.

The two initiatives seem mutually competitive because the TPP does not include China and the Belt and Road Initiative does not involve the US. At a higher level, the global free trade negotiations, hosted by the World Trade Organization, is stuck in a stalemate.

But despite their competition, China and the US can strengthen cooperation in other global institutions, such as the G20.

In 2016, China will host the G20 summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, which will be the most important since 2008, because it will influence or decide the future of global economic governance. And global economic governance cannot be successful without coordination between China and the US.

China has no intention of weakening, let alone overthrowing, the existing global economic governance mechanism. That's why it is helping establish new institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the BRICS New Development Bank, as well as calling for reforms in existing ones like the WTO and the International Monetary Fund.

Sino-US cooperation is the best way to shape future global economic governance. And for that, the US has to support the AIIB and other new institutions initiated by China, and include China in the TPP while China needs to think about how to invite the US to take part in the Belt and Road Initiative.

Only with proper coordination between the two sides can a new world economic order emerge. For that to happen, however, both China and the US have to open the door to each other.

The author is dean of and a professor at the School of International Relations Studies in Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou.