The diplomatic veteran who has witnessed the ice breaking trip of China-U.S. relations said that the United States' China policy has been consistent for decades regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats were in power.
"I think respectable economists, not people who were just working for politicians, all agree that bilateral trade has benefited both the United States and China," said Avory Goldstein, political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania (U Penn), adding that the standard of living of the American people is higher because of less costly Chinese products.
It is unfair for some politicians to blame China for America's loss of manufacturing jobs, Goldstein said, it was more about worldwide market competition, and it was about automation that increases productivity of remaining factories in the United States, which meant fewer workers working in factories.
In his new book, "Failure to Adjust: How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global Economy," Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, pointed out an often-forgotten factor of the decline in U.S. manufacturing since the 1960s: changing consumer demand.
"Rather than arguing over the jobs impact of Chinese import competition, it would be better if both countries acknowledged that there was some negative impacts, and worked together to build a more balanced and mutually beneficial trading relationship for the future," said Alden.
"If the relationship is poorly managed, if the negotiations on trade with China don't go well, and if tariffs are imposed on China, Americans will quickly see the effect," said Goldstein, "which would be an increase in the price of goods."
Michael D. Swaine, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that the United States should not opt for "self-defeating economic actions such as a 45-percent tariff on Chinese imports."
When asked about his attitude towards some politician's notion about the containment of China, Hormats said this issue is "basically a dream that some people are living or their minds are in the last century somehow."
"The notion of containment never made any sense arithmetically and never made any sense politically," he said.
"It doesn't mean there won't be areas of dispute (between the two), there are going to be," Hormats said, "the lesson we've learned since the early 1970s is that these two countries work together to find mutually beneficial solution."
BEYOND BILATERAL TERRITORY
The U.S.-China relations have been well beyond the bilateral territories as the world's top two economies share responsibilities in dealing with many regional and global issues, like climate change, nuclear non-proliferation and countering terrorism.
"Premier Zhou (Enlai) made one point," Hormats recalled his interactions with Chinese leaders in his first visit to in China in 1973. "He said 'look, two great powers should work on great projects, have great goals'."
"I think that if the world is going to resolve global problems, a very good relationship with China is essential, which both sides need to work on to make sure, because it's in both sides' interests to have that kind of relationship," he said.
Goldstein also supported the view that the United States should not try to "prevent China from playing a bigger role in the global economy," but should rather figure out "how to cooperate with China in addressing the problems of the global economy and managing some of the difficult trade and financial issues that come up in international economics."
The best example of such cooperation is that the two countries have joined hands and worked together with other countries to counter the international financial crisis and promote a global economic recovery, said Timothy Geithner, treasury secretary during the first term of the Obama administration, at a recent forum on U.S.-China relations.
"If the U.S. and China had not moved forward in climate change conversations, the Paris Agreement would not have happened," said Jacob Lew, treasury secretary from 2013 to 2017 under the Obama administration.
"The U.S. and China have much more to gain from cooperation than from conflict," said Jeseph Nye, who was deemed as one of the top 100 Global Thinkers by the Foreign Policy in 2011, in an interview with Xinhua.
Obviously, the world too, has much more to gain from a cooperative than a hostile U.S.-China relationship.
