One boat, two oars, how should we row?

Editor's note: November 14, local time, Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in San Francisco where he will attend a summit with U.S. President Joe Biden and the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting. Lawrence H. Summers, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary, said that the United States and China are like two strong men in a rowboat, a lifeboat, in a turbulent sea, a long way from the shore. And that both of them need to be rowing in unison if they are going to get to that shore. How do we get this in unison? This episode of First Voice provides the answer.

In early September this year, the Illinois state governor's office announced that Chinese company Gotion High-tech will set up a $2 billion electric vehicle lithium battery manufacturing plant in the state. It'll give the firm access to the American market while creating 2,600 new jobs. The governor stated that this is the "most significant new manufacturing investment in Illinois in decades."

It wasn't done without controversy. Some politicians have been questioning the move.

In a way, this captures the essence of today's China-U.S. relationships: Cooperation is mutually beneficial; but obstacles, politically-driven or otherwise, are great.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said that "the United States and China are like two strong men in a rowboat, a lifeboat, in a turbulent sea, a long way from the shore. Both of them need to be rowing in unison if they are going to get to that shore."

How do we get this in unison?

Chinese President Xi Jinping will be meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden in San Francisco soon. This will be their first face-to-face meeting since Bali last year, and also the first one on American soil as presidents. It took both sides a long way to get there. Over the past several months, high-level Chinese and U.S. officials or delegations have visited each other's country. They held meetings covering various topics, from climate change to finance to regional conflicts.

But tensions remain. Sanctions placed on Chinese tech firms still leave the impression that the U.S. isn't genuine about willing to see China's further development. And America's arms sales and political support to China's Taiwan region keep throwing wrench into fixing the relationship.

Joseph Nye, former Dean of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, said in an interview that "if you look at U.S.-China relationship, it's gone through many cycles since 1949." He added that "and we're going to learn that many of these problems like climate and pandemics, we have to cooperate."

Actually, it's more than cooperation. It's about complementarity. Take the Gotion High-tech story. China is strong in battery production and technology. The U.S. has a rapidly expanding market that needs these batteries and leads in innovation. Or infrastructure. America needs to fix and update its dilapidated roads. China has decades of experience in infrastructure construction both at home and abroad.

The list goes on.

In October, President Xi told U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that we have thousand reasons to grow the China-U.S. relationship, and none whatsoever to wreck it. We don't. Punching a hole through the boat could sink it. What we need is to make sure that, however turbulent the weather and the sea is, the boat stays unbreakable.

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