Don’t simplify bilateral ties

WANG WENFENG

For the past decade or so, the China-US relationship has seen some strategic shifts. In other words, a variety of issues, from climate change and cyber security to energy development, seemed to top the agenda of many China watchers and US observers, who earlier used to focus on Sino-US strategic generalization.

Therefore, it is hardly possible now for anyone to say whether the countries have reached a tipping point, without major indicators like wars and other devastating events. The “tipping point” theory, to some extent, only reflects the relatively pessimistic attitude some people on both sides have adopted toward bilateral ties, not necessarily the likelihood of a looming war.

As much as it disapproves Washington’s China policy in recent years, Beijing is unlikely to play hawkish in the China-US relationship, which is under danger of being misused by candidates for the the 2016 US presidential election as a bargaining chip. Instead, China remains committed to implementing the new model of major-country relationship with the US.

Of course, the major task at hand is to avoid the worst-case scenarios — military clashes or overall confrontations. But the complexity of the China-US relationship, as the past more than three decades show, means that bilateral ties cannot be simply judged on the basis of a few isolated incidents.

Since the normalization of diplomatic ties with China in 1979 the US has been constantly deepening and updating its understanding of the country. Hence, simplifying Washington’s over-three-decade China policy without noting the embedded consistency in one or two conclusions is baseless and barely convincing.

The author is a senior research fellow at China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.