It's been three days since U.S. Vice President Mike Pence's publicly-hostile speech about China, but it remains an issue of intensive attention as it seems to have sent a chilling message that the U.S. is starting a "new cold war." It was the first time that the U.S. publicly told China that it would not "stand down". Is the "iron curtain" really falling between the two countries? And if there's any hope of avoiding it, where's the way out? CGTN discussed these crucial questions with Ricardo Melendez-Ortiz, CEO and co-founder of the International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development, about the future that lies in front of the U.S. and China. 

CGTN: We already mentioned that America is more selfish than ever before. Trump only cares about his own interests. That makes it very difficult for global governance to take place. What will happen to the global trading system investment rules down the road? Are you optimistic?

Ricardo: I want to remain optimistic. And so I think that the WTO really does underpin the system at the global level. So all the regional trade agreements, the bilateral trade agreements - they're only possible because, in the backdrop, you have this system of agreements and non-discrimination and principles and institutions that back them up. Otherwise that wouldn't be possible. And so I think that that will remain.

I also think that it is important that those countries that want to selectively go into deeper arrangements of integration, because, for instance, they want to promote fragmentation of production among their economies, value chains, and so on, they should be able to do so, but do so within the context of the WTO.

And so, I think that going forward, what we're going to see is perhaps a deepening of regional integration and cooperation accompanied by some weakening of the WTO until the WTO is able.

Going forward for China, I think it will be very important to get on the wagon of 21st Century agreements. China's production and economy today depends on high technology investment services that fragment into value chains.

It needs to guarantee that it can remain connected in good competitive terms, for instance, with its natural area of influence, ASEAN countries, the Asian economy, but also the transpacific. There are a number of good opportunities there, and there are agreements that are now more advanced than the WTO, the TPP Eleven, for instance, the Canada-EU agreement, the new Canada-Japan agreement.

So I think that China will be due to think about a strategy to reach into those new rules on those new agreements because that's where the competition in the future is going to be defined.

CGTN: My final question. Will China and the U.S. weather the storm we are seeing now and come out of this as a surviving or even prosperous economy?

Ricardo: I personally have no doubt. They have no option. They're the two largest economies in the world. They're incredibly intertwined, they're deeply integrated. Their interests in both sides are very large. In the U.S. there's a very big constituency that will not imagine that they could cut off themselves from China. That is impossible.

And on that, an optimistic note.

Video Photographers: Zhou Jinxi, Huang Yichang, Wu Chutian 

Editing: Wu Chutian