Trump's second term offers opportunity to give the relationship a fresh beginning

With Spring Festival fast approaching, Chinese people are preparing to ring out the old year and ring in the new, hoping for the best in the year ahead. Likewise, they hope that with the United States ringing in a change of administration, better prospects are in store for the Sino-US relationship, which has been strained by the bad deeds belying the good words of the Joe Biden administration.

It is the hope of many that the inauguration of Donald Trump as US president on Monday presents the opportunity for China and the US to reset their relations and alter the trajectory, which due to their intensifying — but needless — rivalry over the past four years has put the two countries on a bumpy course.

By acting in good faith to demonstrate the two countries can be friends and partners, as many people from the two sides are already doing, the expectations that new vistas for mutually beneficial cooperation can open up will prove to be well-founded.

The telephone conversation between the two countries' top leaders on Friday, during which President Xi Jinping said he and Trump both value interaction with each other and hope for a good start to the China-US relationship during the new US presidency, reinforced anticipation and confidence that a new chapter will unfold for bilateral relations.

Trump has already promised that among his first acts on taking office will be the repealing of many of Biden's executive orders on his first day in office. "Every radical and foolish executive order of the Biden administration will be repealed within hours of when I take the oath of office," Trump told his supporters at a rally held in Washington on the eve of his inauguration on Sunday.

Trump has also promised a host of new executive orders of his own on "Day One" although these reportedly cover mostly domestic issues, such as border security, mass deportations of illegal immigrants, rolling back government diversity initiatives, and boosting oil and gas production, among other policy items. It is still unclear how much China would be involved or affected by the revoking of Biden's executive orders and the issuing of new ones by Trump.

But given that many of the orders Biden signed were by no means China-friendly, such as the one in August 2023 that blocks high-tech US-based investments going toward the country, and the one issued shortly before he stepped down meant to bolster US security and sanction authority against China for alleged cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, any avenues the new president opens up for both sides to further stabilize their already heavily strained relationship would be constructive, and send a positive signal of intent.

One positive development in that direction is related to the fate of TikTok, the hugely popular video-sharing app that has been banned in the US for its alleged threat to national security. After the app went dark for users this weekend, Trump said on his social media site that he would issue an executive order after he is sworn in on Monday delaying the TikTok ban "so that we can make a deal" to keep it operating and protect the US' national security. Hours later, the app service was restored with the company thanking Trump for his "efforts".

That China and the US can be friends and partners, rather than competitors and even adversaries, is based on the truth of experience.

Despite the differences that exist between them, the two countries share many common interests and huge space for cooperation. Whenever the two countries have treated each other as partners and seek common ground while shelving differences, their relationship has made considerable progress.

But when they have regarded each other as rivals, it has provoked vicious competition, setting relations back, engendering confrontation. So long as the two sides uphold the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, they can push ahead together, as Vice-President Han Zheng, President Xi's special representative to attend Trump's inauguration ceremony, told J. D. Vance, the incoming US vice-president-elect, in a meeting in Washington on Sunday.

As Trump has previously said, China and the US could collaborate to "solve all of the problems of the world". There is no reason why the "two great nations" should not shelve their differences and work together for the benefit of themselves and rest of the world.

A new starting point has been established, but how much progress will be achieved in the development of China-US relations depends on their maintaining communication and making mutual efforts to that end.