He Yafei publishes article on US media (3)

On many issues, the United States cannot divorce itself from China's helping hand. With regard to the North Korean and Iranian nuclear problems, the Syrian crisis, and other difficult issues, there is a need for China to play an important or even a key role. The United States also needs China's help in tackling global challenges such as counterterrorism, nonproliferation, poverty reduction, climate change, and energy security. Faced with a continuing weak economy, Obama sets his priorities on job creation and economic growth, and here again, China can help. On the other hand, there are still neoconservative voices in the United States claiming that the peaceful rise of China is impossible. They even predict that the United States and China will engage in tense security competition and that as the aspiring power tries to surpass the existing superpower, war between the two is inevitable. These voices should not be dismissed lightly, and the two countries should be on guard against such erroneous thinking.

It is therefore of great urgency and necessity that the Asia-Pacific region become a test field for China and the United States to explore the possibility of building a new type of great-power relationship for the 21st century. The two countries need first of all to have their officials and academics concretize the concept -- to put flesh on its bones. There is no room for procrastination. The cost of possible future conflict is simply too high to contemplate.

There need to be new perspectives and new thinking to address both old and new tough issues in China-U.S. relations. China-U.S. relations are well beyond the bilateral, if only for their sheer size. Whatever policy one takes vis-à-vis the other, the implications are multilateral and worldwide, for better or worse.

Consider, for example, climate change and world trade. The global challenge of climate change is a top priority in the cooperation between China and the United States. Clean coal technology and renewable energy are only a few areas where the two countries have been discussing and collaborating in the context of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. The global market potential for green energy, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said, could be in the range of $6 trillion. That is quite positive.

On the other hand, there are troubling signs that cooperation is not what it should be on trade and investment, where cooperation is even more important -- bilateral annual trade already exceeds $500 billion, and more than 89 percent of U.S. businesses in China are reaping profits. Unfortunately, with the United States on one front pushing for the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- now encompassing 12 countries, including Australia and Japan -- and negotiating the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union on the other, it cannot but give China the impression that it is intentionally being left out. Or even worse, that it is being isolated in international trade and investment negotiations, not to speak of numerous instances of failure by Chinese companies trying to invest in the United States. Here I tend to agree with former U.S. Rep. David Dreier when he said in an April commentary in the Wall Street Journal that "China and the U.S. are destined to be the two most important powers of the 21st century," that "the Trans-Pacific Partnership shouldn't be about hedging," and that "[i]t is in the interests of the U.S. that China be part of this partnership."

So how can we improve things? We believe both countries need to rise above our bilateral relationship, that China-U.S. relations probably need to be "de-China-U.S.-ified." Instead, they should focus more on global issues and on making global governance work as the world enters a new era of reform and rejuvenation.