Firmly promote the Sino-US cooperative partnership

Dear Vice Mayor Tu Guangshao,

President Yang Jiemian,

Ambassador Solomon and Ambassador Hill,

Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,

40 years ago, the Shanghai Communiqué was published here. It is a milestone in the history of China-US relations and opened a new chapter of exchanges and cooperation between China and the United States. Looking back at the past 4 decades, we find that, despite the many ups and downs, the bilateral relationship has maintained the right track and thus achieved substantial developments.

Widespread and profound changes have taken place during the 40 years: leaders of both countries now meet several times a year while they met only once in several years 4 decades ago; their bilateral trade grew from less than 2.5 billion USD to the record-setting 440 billion last year; their cooperation has extended from the land, sea, air and space to the virtual world. The seed that the Shanghai Communiqué sowed for China-US relations has already grown into a tall tree and borne rich fruits, which nobody could expect 4 decades ago.

Today, standing on the new historical start-point, China and the US are working together to build a cooperative partnership based on mutual respect and mutual benefit along the direction mapped out by leaders of both countries.

Confucius, the great Chinese thinker, said that Man should no longer suffer from perplexities in his 40's. 40 years after the Shanghai Communiqué, it is time that we overcame the past perplexities about China-US relationship. Now we should have a more profound understanding of its importance, deeper feeling of the fruits it has produced, and higher expectation for its future.

Meanwhile, at this moment of "no perplexities", China-US relationship is still facing some "perplexities", which keeps urging on us to take more efforts to promote the lasting development of this relationship along a healthy and stable course.

The first perplexity is whether enough mutual trust can be built between both countries.

It is obvious that mutual trust is needed between both countries. China and the US must maintain a healthy, stable and sustainable relationship in order to manage their ever closer bilateral ties, to deal with the common challenges on both global and regional levels, to meet the needs of long-term development of the bilateral relations and to respond to the common expectations of the international community. The foundation of such relationship is mutual trust.

It should be recognized that both China and the US have made great efforts to build and strengthen their mutual trust. Now there are more than 60 dialogue and consultation mechanisms between us, which engage all governmental levels from top leaders to working-level officials, and covering such broad areas as politics, security, defense, economy, trade, science and technologies, culture, energy and environment. During President Hu Jintao's state visit to the US January last year at the invitation of President Obama, a joint statement was issued in which both leaders "agreed to further develop and deepen mutual strategic trust in order to enhance the bilateral relationship."

In the meantime, there are indeed mutual trust deficits between our two countries. Whenever the bilateral relationship encounters problems, some would cast doubts on the fundamental value of the relationship; there are always people who advocate starting China-US relationship all over again, despite the fact that such relationship is indeed "too broad and deep to tumble." Therefore, to nurture and deepen mutual trust remains a major issue that requires substantial attention and careful actions of both countries.

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