President Xi Jinping's meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Beijing on Monday afternoon, before the latter wrapped up his two-day China visit, conveyed the paramount significance Beijing attaches to improving relations with Washington, as well as the urgency with which it thinks the two sides should work together to manage their disputes and avoid conflict.

Saying the visit had enabled the two sides to make progress and reach agreements on some specific issues — which he said "is very good" — Xi emphasized that state-to-state interactions should always be based on mutual respect and sincerity.

Washington agrees that the two countries have a shared responsibility and obligation to manage bilateral relations well, and Blinken acknowledged the importance of diplomacy and maintaining open channels of communication across the full range of issues to reduce the risk of misperception and miscalculation in his respective meetings with senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi and State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang over the past two days. Yet he still implied Beijing is to blame for the escalating tensions between the two countries.

He maintained that the Joe Biden administration does not seek a "new Cold War", does not seek to change the Chinese system, does not seek to oppose China by strengthening its alliance, does not support "Taiwan independence", and has no intention of conflict with China. Yet the US' actions till now have given China, as well as the rest of the world that is pressed by Washington to make an us-or-Beijing choice, the opposite impression. Beijing's stance and principles remain clear and consistent: The two sides should keep their relations on a healthy development track buttressed by the three pillars of mutual respect, peaceful co-existence and win-win cooperation. To this end, Beijing always handles US relations with prudence, restraint and composure.

Those not blindly loyal to the US can clearly see that it is the US side that is intentionally creating and spreading misperceptions about China and making efforts to suppress China's development. As such, no matter how earnestly the Chinese side explains the country's development brings only opportunities to the US, it cannot wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

As long as the US clings to that pretense, no matter to what extent the diplomatic and communication channels are restored between the two sides, it will only be for the purpose of giving the administration more time to rid the US of its reliance on China in trade and other sectors as it wages a protracted campaign of attrition.

So while the world should hope for the best that the two major countries can overcome all difficulties. It should also be prepared for the worst that the US continues to try and shape China according to its own wishes. But if the US side can stop the China hawks in Washington from hijacking Sino-US ties and adopt a rational and pragmatic attitude that demonstrates, as Blinken said, that the US is committed to returning to the agenda set by the two presidents at their Bali meeting, no one should be surprised by what the two countries can achieve by working together.