It is dangerous to stir up confrontation between China and the U.S.

By Zhong Sheng

Some so-called China hawks in the U.S. recently sent an open letter to the White House, trying to instigate confrontation between China and the U.S.

It’s obvious that any positive momentum of the development for China-U.S. relations would make them uneasy. Disregarding the common interests of the two peoples, they want to turn the world into chaos. Their practices that poison the relations between China and the U.S. have set an alarm for the world.

   

Stirring up confrontation between China and the U.S. goes against the general direction of the development of the bilateral ties between the two countries.

China-U.S. relationship is one of the world’s most important bilateral ties. The past 40 years since the establishment of China-U.S. diplomatic ties has proven that the two countries stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation. It is a basic fact that cooperation and dialogue are better than friction and confrontation.

Today, when economic and trade frictions between China and the U.S. have lasted for more than a year, the two countries decide to resume economic and trade consultation on the basis of mutual respect and an equal footing, and the two peoples are in greater expectations for boosting China-U.S. relationship based on coordination, cooperation and stability.

Any attempts of the so-call China hawks in the U.S. to buck the general trend of cooperation will be in vain.

They are struggling because they are not satisfied with the current situation, and what they did only revealed their distorted mentality.

For instance, the absurd open letter they wrote has only showed the world their outdated mindset such as the zero-sum game mentality. They are not willing and not able to see the facts, so how is it possible for them to think strategically?

Even the U.S. realist geo-strategy theorist Zbigniew Brzezinski firmly insisted that the U.S. and China should never deviate from the track of cooperation, pointing out that as long as the two countries cooperate on common issues, the “Thucydides Trap” can be avoided.  

To make it simple, some Americans are still obsessed with the illusion of hegemony and not willing to see China’s achievements in peaceful development.

China has always been a constructor of world peace, a contributor to global development, and a defender of international order, which is why it receives wide welcome and praise from the international community.

Such facts caused even severer envies of the China hawks who set China as an imaginary enemy in their illusion. Eventually, they slandered China, made false accusations against China, and even criticized China’s development path as well as internal and foreign policies.

They are not only undermining the development of China-U.S. relations, but also bringing U.S. foreign relations back to the Cold War or even barbarian times. How arrogant they are!

The trend of time keeps rolling forward just like the earth keeps spinning. The wish to obstruct the development of China-U.S. relations with a letter will never be realized.

Facts have shown that the overriding trend toward cooperation of China-U.S. relations has never changed no matter what the two countries have weathered, and the two peoples have also gained tangible benefits from bilateral cooperation.

With highly converging interests and extensive cooperation areas, China and the U.S. will achieve win-win results if they choose peaceful cooperation and common development, and on the contrary, they will end up with damages and regression if they choose confrontation, suppression and blockade.  

Although it’s beyond all question that anyone rational would support cooperation without the least hesitation, some extremely arrogant Americans still enjoy making troubles and assume that the U.S. can take an easy win in any confrontation.

Charles W. Freeman Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to China and chief interpreter of former U.S. President Richard Nixon, recently pointed out in his recent speech that “few phenomena are as discomfiting as the sight of the American people in one of our periodic fits of nativism”, suggesting that China is forced by the U.S. into becoming a rival that the latter can’t defeat.

Susan L. Shirk, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, also warned the U.S. about the current situation, saying that the U.S. is at risk of being gripped by “an anti-Chinese version of the Red Scare”.

“We’ve made this mistake once before, during the Cold War,” Shirk said. “And I don’t think we should make it again.”

The concerns of these insightful Americans represented a kind of soberness realized from the contemplation over history. In this regard, the views in the open letter are obviously not the mainstream public opinion in the U.S.

History has taught us a lesson: stirring up confrontation between China and the U.S. is dangerous, while promoting win-win cooperation between them is the correct choice.

(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People's Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)