Prominent experts on China gathered in Atlanta on Wednesday at The Carter Center for a two-day symposium aimed at promoting greater understanding and cooperation between China and the United States.
The forum, organized by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and The Carter Center, focuses on the new phase of reform in China that began with Chinese President Xi Jinping's assumption of top leadership positions more than two years ago.
"In the coming decades, there will be no more important factor for peace, prosperity and stability than how the U.S. and China manage their complex and evolving connection," Mary Peters, chief executive officer of The Carter Center, said at the opening session of the forum.
Peters said despite historical and domestic differences between the two countries, there are plenty of steps that both nations can take to enhance communication and cooperation.
"One of The Cater Center's core missions is to wage peace," Peters said. "To encourage greater understanding between the U.S. and China is indeed to wage peace."
Li Zhaoxing, president of China Public Diplomacy Association, also called on the two nations to promote cooperation and address differences through dialogue.
"We need to exchange views in a friendly manner, expand mutual interests, and properly manager our differences, so as to make the world a better place," the former Chinese foreign minister said.
At the forum, more than 30 eminent scholars, policy researchers and veteran diplomats from China and the U.S. exchanged ideas on a wide range of topics, including international affairs and economic changes in China.
Over the past decades, the U.S. and China have come "along a bumpy road" but have had the overall assessments that "we each have fundamental shared interests and cooperation and the cost of conflict will always outweigh the possible gains," David Lampton, a China expert of Johns Hopkins University, said in his keynote address to the forum.
He said leaders in both the U.S. and China have the responsibility "to speak out against corrosive nationalism."
"Neither the world nor the two countries can afford the United States and China as adversaries," Lampton added.
Based in Atlanta, the capital of the U.S. state of Georgia, The Carter Center is a non-governmental, non-profit organization founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter.
