Zhang Yuyan

is Professor at the School of International Relations, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (UCASS) and Senior Fellow and Director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics, CASS; Xu Xiujun is Senior Fellow and Director of the International Political Economy Department, Institute of World Economics and Politics, CASS.

1 “Xi Congratulates Biden on Election as U.S. President,” Xinhua, November 25, 2020, http://www. xinhuanet.com/english/2020-11/25/c_139542676.htm.

2 Xi Jinping, “Shouldering Together the Responsibilities of Our Times to Promote Global Development,” in Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, Vol.2, Foreign Languages Press, 2017, p.476.

3 Graham Allison, “The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?” The Atlantic, September 24, 2015; Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.

4 Richard N. Cooper, The Economics of Interdependence: Economic Policy in the Atlantic Community, New York: Mcgraw-hill, 1968; Richard N. Cooper, “Economic Interdependence and Foreign Policy in the Seventies,” World Politics, Vol.24, No.2, 1972, pp.159-181.

5 Richard N. Rosecrance, The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in the Modern World, New York: Basic Books, 1986.

6 Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, New York: Farrar,

Straus and Giroux, 2005.

7 Robert O. Keohan and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence, 4th edition, Boston: Pearson, 2012, p.9.

8 Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, Reading: Addison-wesley Publishing Company,

1979.

9 Katherine Barbieri, “Economic Interdependence: A Path to Peace or A Source of inter-state Conflict?” Journal of Peace Research, Vol.33, No.1, 1996, pp.29-49.

10 Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman, “Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion,” International Security, Vol.44, No.1, 2019, pp.42-79.

11 “Xi Jinping and Barack Obama Meet the Press,” People’s Daily, June 9, 2013.

12 Zhang Yuyan et al., Globalization and Development of China, Social Sciences Academic Press, 2007, p.55.

13 Germán Gutiérrez and Thomas Philippon, “Declining Competition and Investment in the U.S.,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No.23583, July 2017, https://www.nber.org/ papers/w23583; Christian Broda and John Romalis, “Inequality and Prices: Does China Benefit the Poor in America?” University of Chicago working paper, March 10, 2008, https://www.etsg.org/etsg2008/papers/ Romalis.pdf.

14 Zhi Wang et al., “Re-examining the Effects of Trading with China on Local Labor

Markets: A Supply Chain Perspective,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No.24886, August 2018, revised in October 2018, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24886/w24886. pdf.

15 Scott Lincicome, “Testing the ‘China Shock’: Was Normalizing Trade with China a Mistake?” Cato Institute, July 8, 2020, https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/testing-china-shock-wasnormalizing-trade-china-mistake.

16 Weihuan Zhou, China’s Implementation of the Rulings of the World Trade Organization, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2019; James Bacchus et al., “Disciplining China’s Trade Practices at the WTO: How WTO Complaints Can Help Make China More Market-oriented,” Cato Institute, November 15, 2018, https://www. cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/disciplining-chinas-trade-practices-wtohow-wto-complaints-can-help. 17 The White House, “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” December 2017, p.2, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/nss-final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf.

Department in January 2018, defined China as a “strategic competitor” and “revisionist power.”18 The US Strategic Approach to China, released in May 2020, further articulated the view that the United States would protect American interests and advance American influence “through a whole-ofgovernment approach and guided by a return to principled realism” in order to comply with its economic values and meet the security challenges of China.19 In the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean region, the US advanced its Indo-pacific strategy, which brought on board Japan, India, and Australia, to help safeguard and consolidate US hegemony through combined political, diplomatic, and military means, block China’s strategic space, and undermine China’s international influence. In addition, the US continually interferes in China’s internal affairs on issues related to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet, and challenges China’s maritime sovereign rights and interests. These strategic measures and actions by the US have seriously damaged the mutual trust, and significantly undermined the political foundation of the benign interactions between the two countries.

Requirements for Building a New Type of China-us Relations

Historically, the development of China-us relations has had a solid political foundation. The Shanghai Communiqué, the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations, and the August 17 Communiqué have established the one-china principle and laid out the norms for a relationship of mutual respect, equal treatment and seeking common ground while reserving differences. During the Obama administration, China and the United States continuously made new breakthroughs in building a new type of major-country relationship through strengthening

strategic communication, expanding practical cooperation, and properly managing differences, which enhanced the common interests of the two peoples and the people around the world. As a fundamental inspiration for bilateral relations in this period, “the two sides need to stay committed to the principles of non-confrontation, non-conflict, mutual respect and winwin cooperation, and work steadily toward a new model of major-country relations.”20 Today, as the world is undergoing momentous changes unseen in a century, both the external environment and the internal foundation for the development of China-us relations are experiencing new significant changes. In the face of worsening bilateral relations, the construction of a new type of China-us relations is the solution to breaking the traditional law of conflict and confrontation between major powers, and creating a new model for the development of their relations. To be specific, the new type of China-us relationship can be achieved by surmounting the following four aspects.

First, to surmount mutually assured destruction. During the Cold War, the military confrontation between the Us-led and Sovietled camps did not lead to large-scale military conflicts and all-out wars, instead maintaining peace over a long period of time between the two superpowers. However, it was a balance of nuclear deterrence under the strategy of “mutually assured destruction,” which continually threatened to bring the world to the brink of war. Since the development of nuclear weapons, nuclear states have had to face the question of how big their nuclear weaponry had to be in order to assure their national security. In the 1960s, then US Secretary of Defense Robert S. Mcnamara set the standards for mutually assured destruction, arguing that the US must have a reliable capability of “assured destruction” if it was to prevent nuclear attacks on the US or its allies.21 Thus, mutually assured destruction became the core of the

Us-soviet deterrence strategy. Apart from a balanced nuclear deterrence, the policies and conditions of the long peace between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War also included long-standing ideological opposition, respect for each other’s sphere of influence, differentiation of opponents, tolerance of strategic non-transparency, and a fairly high but not complete economic distancing from each other, etc.22 There is no doubt that such policies based on mutually assured destruction are incompatible with the current environment and cannot bring about real world peace.

Second, to surmount the Cold War mentality. The Cold War mentality mainly refers to the manner of thinking of the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, in handling inter-state relations and resolving international disputes during the Cold War era. Essentially it is hegemonic thinking and exhibits the logic of mighty power in pursuing one’s self-interests. In the past one hundred years, the international order has been evolving in conjunction with the formation and expansion of American hegemony. In the latter part of the Second World War, the United States, with the help of its relative national strength, began to seek an institutional dominance by promoting and establishing international trading rules and multilateral international institutions which could safeguard and expand its hegemonic interests. At the same time, the US actively implemented the strategy of alignment for a Us-led Western alliance to strengthen its hegemony and achieve a “Pax Americana.” However, due to the huge impact on its economy after the global financial crisis in 2008 and the sharp rise of government debt, it has become more difficult for the US to maintain the enormous spending needed to sustain the hegemonic system. Despite this, the Trump administration still pressed ahead with the “America First” foreign policy, requesting trading partners to cut their trade surplus in the name of so-called “fair trade,” while threatening to withdraw from the multilateral institutions in an attempt to maintain US hegemony by containment and blackmailing. At a time when the fate of all nations is so closely connected and intertwined, the

23 Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980, pp.21-22.

24 Wang Yi, “Serving the Country and Contributing to the World: China’s Diplomacy in a Time of Unprecedented Global Changes and a Once-in-a-century Pandemic,” Study Times, December 14, 2020.

25 “Work Hard to Build a New Model of Major-country Relationship between China and the United States: Address by H.E. Xi Jinping at the Joint Opening Ceremony of the Sixth Round of the China-us Strategic and Economic Dialogue and the Fifth Round of the China-us High-level Consultation on Peopleto-people Exchange,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, July 9, 2014, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_ eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/t1178864.shtml.

26 “Security Evaluation of China’s Industrial Chains: 60 Percent Secure and Under Control,” China Industrial and Economic Information Net, October 21, 2019, http://www.cinic.org.cn/xw/cjxw/641727.html.

27 Zhang Yuyan, “COVID-19 Pandemic and the World Outlook,” World Economics and Politics, No.4,

2020, p.6.

28 Zhang Yuyan and Niu He, “The Success and Limit of Donald Trump, A Discussion of China-us Economic and Trade Relations,” International Economic Review, No.2, 2017, p.14.

29 “Xi Jinping Delivers an Important Speech at the High-level Meeting to Commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the United Nations,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, September 21, 2020, https:// www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1817250.shtml.