Common interests push bilateral relations high

By Zhang Haizhou (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-19 07:47

Washington and Beijing are more likely than ever to become equal partners, as they realized they share many common interests, experts said.

As United States President Barack Obama wrapped up his first visit to China Wednesday, commentators said the two countries would not be this close if it were not for so many common global challenges.

Premier Wen Jiabao greets US President Barack Obama before a meeting in Beijing on Wednesday. [Wu Zhiyi/China Daily]

In his meeting with Premier Wen Jiabao Wednesday, Obama said the US has realized Beijing's concern over Washington's export control.

He said the US is willing to take measures to increase its hi-tech exports to China.

Wen said China wants to balance its trade relationship with the US and does not seek a surplus. Both of them said they oppose trade protectionism.

A day earlier, President Hu Jintao said after holding a morning of talks with Obama that both countries should establish a partnership to face global challenges.

The joint statement that Hu and Obama issued was the broadest of its kind in 30 years of formal relations, the Associated Press said.

David Shambaugh, a senior visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the joint statement is "an extremely positive document".

"If all of the agreements and goals identified in the joint statement are implemented, it will take Sino-US relations into a totally new and positive era," said Shambaugh, a China expert originally from George Washington University.

Some Chinese experts said the two nations have realized they share many common interests.

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"Interactions between the two countries are always based on common interests since Mao Zedong's time (when they started to re-approach each other in the 1970s)," said Zhou Qi, an expert on US studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The threat from the former Soviet Union pushed the two countries together during the Cold War. But when it was over, disputes on some issues including human rights emerged in the early 1990s, she noted.

"Now is a time when mutual interests have outweighed differences," Zhou said. "Otherwise how can two such distinctive countries in history, culture and tradition be so close."

Obama is in Asia calling for help when the US is in trouble, said Pang Zhongying, an international affairs expert at Beijing-based Renmin University of China.

The economic crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have pulled Washington into trouble. The country also has to face other global challenges such as global warming.

"Obama is telling Asian countries that 'we are on the same boat, so helping the US would be helping yourselves'," Pang said. "Obama is telling China and other Asian countries to share the burden."

Differences between the two have become secondary to common interests, but it doesn't mean disparities never existed.

Rear Admiral Yang Yi, a senior expert at the Institute of Strategic Studies of the National Defense University, said military ties have lagged far behind the substantial progress achieved in the political and economic domains, although Hu and Obama put planned high-level military exchanges into the joint statement.

"Beijing is actually telling the US to be cautious about its arms sales to Taiwan," Yang said.

Washington needs to stop arms sales to Taiwan or its high-level military exchange with Beijing might be terminated, he added.

"A uni-polar world, which the US has enjoyed since the end of the Cold War, has come to an end," Pang stressed. "A new era in which China and the US need to face global challenges together has just started."

 

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