The relationship between the United States and China is getting
better after it moved out of the shadow of the EP-3 incident, and
the two sides can cooperate on some security issues, said US
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.
"I'm happy to report that I think US-China relations are improving
tremendously," Rice told a group of dignitaries in a luncheon
speech delivered at the National Press Club here in Washington
D.C.
Rice said that one of the two guidelines US President George W.
Bush set out at the very beginning of the EP-3 incident in April is
to "preserve the framework for a productive relationship with
China."
During the incident, a Chinese fighter jet fell into the sea and
the pilot lost his life after it was bumped by a US EP-3 spy plane
near China's Hainan Island. The US airplane, also damaged in the
collision, landed on Chinese territory without advance notice. The
incident caused high tension for several weeks in relations between
the two countries.
"We really did believe fairly early on that we had a road map to
getting out of this situation and that, after we were out of it, we
would have a chance for a productive relationship (with China), "
Rice said.
The US crewmen returned home 11 days after the incident, and the US
plane was also ferried back recently. "The president and President
Jiang Zemin spoke as soon as the plane was back out of China," Rice
noted.
While describing the US-China relations as "complicated" with the
two sides having differences on some security issues, Rice said,
"China is a rising power ... We clearly have some security
interests where we've been able to cooperate, for instance, on the
Korean Peninsula."
Rice conceded that the two countries also have divergent views on
human rights, but such an issue should be "put in a larger
context." "China is a country that's going through a tremendous
transformation internally," she added.
"Anybody who has been there in the last several years, who was
there much earlier, cannot say that this is the same China. It is a
China in which Chinese citizens are taking more responsibility for
their own lives." Rice said.
Meanwhile, Samuel R. Berger, former US national security advisor
under the Clinton administration, put out an article in the
International Herald Tribune on Friday, stressing that "there is no
time for America to alienate Beijing."
Berger, who now heads Stonebridge International, a consulting firm,
said that it is "unsustainable" for the United States to carry out
a China policy that tries to mingle economic engagement and
political hostility.
"An ideologically driven shift toward confrontation (with China)
would be a serious mistake," he emphasized.
"China does not have the capability to be a destabilizing force in
Asia. Nor is there much evidence that it intends to do so," Burger
said.
He
said that if China can succeed in the next few years "with perhaps
the boldest market-oriented economic experiment in modern times"
and peacefully manage the social consequences with the law, "it
will be transformed, as will Asia and the world," he said.
Such a change would conform to America's long-term national
interests, and therefore, "it makes no sense to throw a monkey
wrench into the process," Berger said in the article.
(People’s Daily 07/15/2001)