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China-U.S. relations top World Peace Forum agenda
Updated 18:18, 05-Jul-2021
Yang Shanshan
02:00

Former government officials and international relations experts are calling for the world's two biggest economies to manage their relationship and find common ground, instead of resorting to harsh words and confrontation.

Experts at the World Peace Forum, held at the weekend in Beijing, said China's rise will not be stoppable, and the U.S. government's attempts to confront China could be aimed at political gain rather than benefiting the country.

Yasuo Fukuda, a former Japanese prime minister, said the U.S. has been alert to China's development but cannot stop its rise. He said China should be aware that the harsh words Biden has used about China are not based on long-term considerations, but part of a strategy to reach a bipartisan consensus at home. 

Kevin Rudd, a former Australian prime minister, said too much has been happening in the China-U.S. relationship since the 2018 and 2019 trade war, 2020 pandemic and the increasingly hard policies started by the Biden administrations in 2021.

"The reality is that in the new age of strategic competition between China and the United States, as a matter of logic, there are only two alternatives: manage strategic competition, with some rules of the road and some prospect of preserving the peace, or un-manage the competition, the loss of all strategic guardrails and the growing risk of crisis, conflict and war," Rudd said.

He called for a strategic competition framework to manage down the growing arrays of security and foreign policy tensions which currently dominate China's relationship with the U.S. For example, climate change and nuclear deproliferation could be areas for China and the U.S. to cooperate, he said. 

At the recent G7 summit, the Biden administration tried to unite allies to take on China for a political win. But Kishore Mahbubani, a former Singaporean foreign minister, pointed out that superficial diplomatic statements can't override real economic interests and trade relations.

"At the end of the day, countries have to be realistic, have to take care of their own interests. As far as they are concerned, they want to have good ties with the United States, they want to have good ties with China, and they don't want to take sides."

China has insisted on addressing differences with the U.S. and jointly tackling global challenges such as climate change and pandemic control. 

Fu Ying, a former Chinese vice foreign minister, said at the forum that the main lesson people have learned from the COVID-19 pandemic is that no country can face global challenges alone.

"Learning from this lesson, we should focus on working together on common interests, instead of being swayed by differences. And we should go through global challenges together by upholding multilateralism," Fu said.

Experts agreed that resetting China-U.S. relations is urgent, but both sides face considerable challenges in so doing.

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