As Chinese President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump, met on Thursday at the White House under global gaze, they reached many new common understandings, providing fresh strategic guidance for the world’s most important bilateral relationship.
While those common understandings have further enriched the vision of building a constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability, Xi went further by urging the two sides to translate that vision into action and find the right way for the two major countries to get along.
For China and the United States, that means working toward a direction featuring cooperation as the mainstay, moderate competition, manageable differences, and promises of peace.
There is ample reason to do so. The interests of China and the United States are deeply intertwined, and there is plenty of room for them to work together. Also, achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand.
China and the United States should, and fully can, achieve mutual benefit and win-win results through practical cooperation, help each other succeed through healthy competition, properly manage differences by seeking common ground while respecting differences, and build peace by fostering mutual trust.
Economic and trade cooperation has long been regarded as the ballast for bilateral ties. A stable China-U.S. economic and trade relationship requires both expanding the list of cooperation and shortening the list of problems.
The economic and trade teams of the two countries recently held a new round of consultations and reached joint arrangement, which is good news for the industries and people of both countries, as well as the global economy.
The same approach can also be applied to emerging areas that will shape the future of humanity. Both China and the United States are leading nations in artificial intelligence (AI). While they compete in AI, they have even more reasons to cooperate. The two sides should leverage respective strengths in AI rather than guard against each other.
The two sides can continue to engage in dialogue on AI, exchange views on its risks and benefits, and work together to prevent the misuse and abuse of AI. They should also maintain human control over AI technologies, and ensure that AI serves human progress.
Today, China-U.S. relations once again stand at a new historical starting point. Building a constructive relationship of strategic stability between the two major countries is not an expediency, nor will it be realized overnight. The two sides need to work persistently to deliver on their common understandings and work together to build a better world.
