Right choices vital to calm Sino-US ties

There will always be differences between China and the United States, but none of those justify confrontation and war, cold or hot, the Chinese ambassador to the US said in Washington on Thursday in his first comments on bilateral relations after Joe Biden became US president-elect.

Cui Tiankai, who has been Beijing's top envoy in Washington since 2013, during Biden's second term as vice-president, said it is time for reflection on the "consequential relationship" between China and the US.

The reflection, Cui said, is necessitated not by the so-called failures of the past as claimed by some top US diplomats, but by the fast and complex changes in the world, which come with great opportunities as well as high risks.

"We have to have a shared vision for the future and make the right choice," Cui said in a panel discussion of the annual conference of the Institute of China-US Studies.

He noted that there already are discussions about what a post-pandemic world will look like and what kind of global governance will be needed for such a world.

"It is clear that the post-pandemic world would not be stable, and global governance would not be effective, without sound and stable relations between China and the US," he said.

The ambassador lauded Harvard Professor Graham Allison, another panelist at the conference, for having made a timely warning against the Thucydides Trap.

"He also quoted Shakespeare that our destiny lies 'not in our stars, but in ourselves' and again, 'nothing is written in stone'," Cui said of Allison. "Everything depends on the choices we make."

He noted that the zero-sum game is anachronistic and that attempts to incite distrust and even hatred among different nations and civilizations are extremely irresponsible.

"The first and foremost thing we have to do to be on the right side of history is to reject the outdated mindset," he said."The best way to avoid a trap is to open up a new path. This is the vision that we shall hold and a historic mission that we have to fulfill today."

Allison, author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?, said the "good news" is that when the new administration takes office, Biden understands there's not only nuclear MAD－nuclear mutual assured destruction, which would be the outcome if the US and China ended up in a war.

"But there's also climate MADclimate mutual assured destruction, in which if the two greatest greenhouse gas emitters don't find ways to cooperate, we can create a biosphere that nobody can live in,"Allison said.

It is not easy or comfortable for the two countries to find a way to cooperate and compete at the same time, but that's the challenge, he said.

Reopening consulates?

During the discussion, Stephen Orlins, president of the National Committee on United States-China Relations asked if China is prepared to do something before Jan 20, like reopening the US consulate in Chengdu, which was closed in late July after the US shut the Chinese consulate in Houston.

Cui said:"I don't think that China should just do something to please anybody here. Because we always stand up for stable and good relations with the United States. We never initiated all these provocative actions.

"So if the US government is ready to reverse the course, we're ready to look at it, and in order to put the relations on the right track, to have real improvement of the relations, both sides have to proceed with goodwill and good faith," the ambassador said.