Genuine resolve to work together is key to China-U.S. cooperation

Editor's note: Daryl Guppy, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is an international financial technical analysis expert. He has provided weekly Shanghai Index analyses for mainland Chinese media for more than a decade. Guppy appears regularly on CNBC Asia and is known as "The Chart Man." He is a former national board member of the Australia China Business Council. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

The summit meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden brings together two very different views of the world. Despite some enduring differences, the meeting is an important step forward.

We start with President Biden's view of the world. He comes armed with a series of demands for compliance which he promotes as cooperation because he thinks they are the same. President Xi has a different worldview. He comes seeking a number of assurances which lay the foundations for future cooperation. The difference in approach is important and no accident because it reflects two different ideas of what global cooperation means.

President Biden said the goal of the summit was for the leaders to "understand each other." In many ways, this appeared to involve a restatement of entrenched ideas, many of which already come from an inadequate understanding of each other.

The result is that President Biden wants President Xi to comply with his demands rather than try to develop a true understanding.

President Xi said the leaders bear "heavy responsibilities" for the world. "For two large countries like China, and the United States, turning their backs on each other is not an option. Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed." This perspective places an emphasis on progress in areas of agreement and reducing the potential for conflict rather than acceding to demands for compliance under a mask of cooperation. 

The meeting is welcome as both leaders acknowledge the need for better communication, but real progress will be made in areas not marred by already hardened policy positions. The fact that these will be discussed in a face-to-face situation is already a significant achievement.

"It's paramount that you and I understand each other clearly, leader to leader, with no misconceptions or miscommunication," President Biden said. "We have to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict. And we also have to manage it responsibly." His meaning was that compliance with U.S. demands is the preferred form of cooperation accepted by the United States. 

President Xi pointed out during the meeting that China and the U.S. should "assume a new vision" for bilateral relations, and called for both sides to manage differences and promote mutually beneficial cooperation. He was calling for Biden to understand and acknowledge the legitimacy of China's perspective.

He mentioned "mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation" as some of the major lessons from half a century of the two countries' ties and that we should strive to follow them. China is looking for assurances that the U.S. will not support Taiwan's independence or start a "new Cold War." China is also looking for assurances that the U.S. will not continue to suppress its economic growth in the digital economy.

Success here depends on longer term changes in the way the U.S. understands that cooperation is not the same as compliance. It is unlikely that significant progress will be made in rapidly resolving these long-term issues, but that outcome should not detract from the importance of the restoration of communications that the leaders' meeting represents. This allows for cooperation to develop in new areas.

In the immediate future, there is the opportunity to develop more effective cooperation. There are a number of areas in which the two sides have agreed to work together, including artificial intelligence, counter-narcotic cooperation, military-to-military dialogue, as well as educational and cultural exchanges.

There is a broad acknowledgment that both countries must work together in the face of the common threat posed by climate change. It is not a threat that can be resolved by the meeting of two heads of government, but cooperation at this level opens the way for officials at lower levels to also meet, communicate and develop common supportive policy responses.

Already progress has been made with an announcement that the U.S. and China had agreed to pursue efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030, through wind, solar and other renewables.

Many policy positions are firmly entrenched and mired in historical misunderstandings and bound by previous decisions which, for the Americans in particular, are difficult to overturn because of domestic political issues that will dominate next year's presidential election. It is the challenges in new areas where policy positions have not hardened that offer the immediate benefits from this leaders' meeting. Cooperation does not come from compliance with unilateral demands. Cooperation comes from a genuine resolve to work together. Initially, this may be more easily achieved in confronting new challenges so both presidents have pledged to work together more closely to fight global warming, declaring the climate crisis "one of the greatest challenges of our time." 

Looking beyond a resumption of easier communication between the two leaders and officials at all levels, this commitment to climate cooperation may be the most significant outcome of the meeting between the Chinese and U.S. leaders.

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