Those who wish China ill will only hurt themselves

If you listened to the comments of some government officials, lawmakers, pundits and commentators, it is not hard to realize that there are people in the United States who wish China ill.

These people never seem to understand that as former US treasury secretary Larry Summers once said, it is possible to imagine a 21st century in which both China and the US do well, or in which neither does well, but hard to imagine one will do well and the other will not.

The past days have shown why it is foolish to harbor any ill will toward China.

The world expressed shock and condemnation on Wednesday after the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea claimed to have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb, and much of the talk in the US has been on how important China is to defuse the situation on the Korean Peninsula, given China’s long-standing ties with its neighbor to the northeast.

While such a statement may be only partly true, the expectation came from some who often treat China as an adversary of the US.

And on Monday, the tumbling Chinese stock market sparked a global selloff, including a decline on the US markets. The impact from a slowdown of the Chinese economy has become a major topic in the US recently. This just shows how intertwined China and the global economy have become, especially the world’s two largest economies, the US and China.

If those people wishing China ill were truly successful, it only means that the US stock markets and economy would be hit badly, and for a long time to come.

The UN Climate Conference in Paris in December was a great example showing that it serves the interests of both countries and indeed the entire world when China and the US work together, instead of against each other. And there is a long list of such challenges awaiting closer cooperation between the two nations, from promoting global economic growth and the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons to counterterrorism and ensuring regional stability.

Next Tuesday, US President Barack Obama will deliver his final State of the Union address. In a bid to push the US Congress to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, Obama will likely again resort to scaremongering about China, repeating his line that “we can’t let countries like China write the rules of the global economy; we should write those rules”.

Such rhetoric is highly toxic to the bilateral relations between the two nations struggling to overcome their deep-rooted geopolitical distrust.

Apart from the TPP, the Obama administration has also been using its rebalancing towards Asia strategy to curtail the growing influence of China. The rhetoric in the US seems to be that if anything goes wrong in the region, it must be China’s fault.

Such US rhetoric and the strategies that it accompanies have greatly dampened the potential for the two countries to work together, including on the urgent issue of non-proliferation in the Korean Peninsula despite some progress.

There is no doubt in the minds of some Chinese that the US is engaging in a Cold War type of geopolitical game in trying to encircle China with its allies and partners.

Several officials in the Obama administration have in the past year publicly talked about China being a major challenge and threat to the US.

The US needs to change this mindset, a good start would be for Obama to refrain from using inflammatory language against China in his address next Tuesday to show that he actually understands Summers’ wisdom.

Such US rhetoric and the strategies that it accompanies have greatly dampened the potential for the two countries to work together ...