Opinion

Sino-US dialogue: a chance to deepen trust, co-op

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-05-09 13:28

China and the United States will be in their third round of Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED), a mechanism created in 2009 to manage bilateral relationship and promote communication between the two countries.

The dialogue, slated for Monday and Tuesday in Washington, will be co-chaired by Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan and State Councilor Dai Bingguo, and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner -- as special representatives of Chinese President Hu Jintao and US President Barack Obama respectively.

While no major breakthroughs are expected from this coming round, the dialogue can well serve, as a whole, as a forum to increase mutual trust and deepen cooperation especially in economy and trade, and to exchange views on strategic and long-lasting issues that have a bearing on the development of China-US relations, as well as on international and regional issues of common interest.

ENHANCING MUTUAL TRUST

"The way you build trust is to establish patterns of commutations where one side can indicate how they will behave on particular issues," said former US Ambassador to China Stapleton Roy in a recent interview with Xinhua.

"If they actually behave that way, that enhances mutual trust. Where mutual trust is damaged is where one side has an expectation that the other side failed to live up to, and then the other side believes they've been misled," he said.

Key to building trust is having bilateral ties that promote frank, open and honest communication that helps convince each party to understand how the other is likely to behave, said Roy, who is now director of the Kissinger Institute for Chinese-US Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

"If the trust is cooperative, all the better. But even if you have differences with the other side, if you are able to understand how those differences will be managed, the differences do not have to contribute to a lack of trust," he said. "And I think this pattern of leadership exchanges now should make that easier."

Briefing reporters on the S&ED in Washington on Thursday, Kurt Campbell, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, also spoke highly of the role of the dialogue mechanism in handling Washington's relations with Beijing.

"In my respects, it is our most important venue, our mechanism, if you will, for managing this complex relationship between the United States and China," Campbell said.

RELATIONSHIP ON POSITIVE TRACK

In the lead up to the dialogues, ties between the two countries remain solid, former US Defense Secretary William Cohen told Xinhua.

"It's still on a very positive track at the executive level," the former Clinton administration official said. "President Obama and his entire economic and security team are focused on building a better economic and security relationship with China."

Now issues between the two countries that need to be addressed are becoming part of the dialogue, Cohen said.

Ambassador Roy, and Kenneth Lieberthal, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, both echoed similar views when asked about the state of China-US relationship ahead of the S&ED.

"I think there are a tremendous number of challenges going forward, but I think that last year we saw a negative dynamic emerge in the bilateral relationship that was exacerbating problems and interfering with our ability to work productively," Roy said.

"President Hu's visit (in January) had a very positive impact on that situation. By getting both governments focused on how to make Hu's visit a positive one, it altered the psychology of our bilateral dealings, and I think that positive momentum has continued after Hu's visit," he said.

"So my sense is that the bilateral relationship is working better now than it was at this time a year ago. And I would hope that can continue," the former ambassador added.

Lieberthal also said President Hu's visit was significant.

"Both presidents took the occasion of the visit to make very clear in public that although we have and will continue to have disagreements based in interests, culture, values and history, that the value of the relationship overall is so great overall to each country, that we can't let our disagreements overwhelm our capacity to realize the upside benefits of basically cooperative relations," he said.

"Both (presidents) said the same thing about that. I think those were important messages," he said.

FOLLOWING UP CONSENSUS MADE DURING HU'S VISIT

"Following on the successful visit of President Hu Jintao to Washington earlier this year, our intent is to make sure that we follow through on many of the areas that the two leaders and their senior teams committed to work together on," said Assistant Secretary of State Campbell.

On the strategic track, Campbell said that the United States wants to compare notes with China on issues related to the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, the nuclear issue of Iran, and other regional problems.

He also said both sides would have discussions about such cross-cutting issues as energy security, development, and food assistance.

On the economic track, Roy believed that the dialogue should follow up what have been achieved during President Hu's visit. "I think the focus needs to be on follow up to the discussions in connection with Hu's visit in January," he said.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, David Loevinger, senior coordinator and executive secretary for China and S&ED at the Department of Treasury, said Washington wants to have discussions on the revaluation of the Chinese yuan, intellectual property rights, interest rates ceiling and financial services.

He expected the Chinese side will have priorities on market access, greater access to US high-technology exports, recognition as a market economy and new investment opportunities for Chinese enterprises in the United States.

INNOVATION: STRATEGIC SECURITY DIALOGUE

On Friday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai announced in Beijing that China and the United States will launch their first strategic security dialogue during the third S&ED in Washington.

Cui said the dialogue will be co-chaired by Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun and US Deputy State Secretary James Steinberg. Leading officials from diplomatic and military departments of both sides will also attend dialogue.

"On the strategic side, the story is this new dialogue -- the strategic security dialogue," Bonnie Glaser, a senior fellow in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Xinhua in an interview.

Meanwhile, Assistant Secretary of State Campbell described the strategic security dialogue as an "innovation" of the coming S&ED.

"I think our goal here is to create greater understanding around issues that have the potential for miscalculation and inadvertence in our relationship, and I think we all recognize that these security issues are increasingly important in the smooth management of our relationship going forward," he said.