For the foreign exchange reserves and technologies it was badly in need of at the time, China paid the cost of its environment and bad working conditions for its poor villagers-turned-laborers who were underpaid for the hard work they did.

The developed countries, the US in particular, transferred their assembly lines and workshops that were energy-consuming and polluting to China. While these countries lost most of their manufacturing industries, their people enjoyed cheap goods and their transnational companies got the majority of the profits from the processing industry in China.

To be fair and honest, each has no reason to call the other a free rider. Had either or both been a free rider the cooperation between the two could not have been maintained for more than three decades. Had China really always benefited the most from the dealings between them, without letting its partner get what it should, it would not have been possible for the two countries to attach the importance they have to their bilateral relations.

So the discussion about who is the free rider is meaningless bickering, which will only add to the unpleasantness between the two countries created by the US's pivot to Asia and the favor it gives Japan in the Sino-Japanese disputes over the Diaoyu Islands.

What both need from each other may have changed, but what remains unchanged is the fact that both still need each other, not least because their partnership and cooperation will not just benefit each other but also be of significance to regional stability and world peace at large.

What will never change is the fact that both will never let the other be a free rider unless the policymakers on either side are idiots.

The author is a senior writer of China Daily. zhuyuan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 08/29/2014 page8)