--By Gu Xuewu, Director of the Center for Global Studies, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

Following the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee, China is entering an era of unprecedented reform. It's not hard to see that the new administration has made up its mind to deepen reform in China and lift it from the economic foundation to the superstructure. A five-in-one reform plan that covers almost every aspect of China's development beckons. As Yu Zhengsheng, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Chairman of the CPPCC, has pointed out, the scope and strength of this round of reform will be unlike any before.

Unprecedented reform calls for unprecedented diplomacy. Such a big step forward needs a harmonious international environment. Without this, it would be hard for the Chinese government to carry out reform successfully. Whether China's diplomacy can create the optimum environment for the realization of the Chinese Dream depends on its grasp of the current and future trends of the international situation. Whether this grasp is accurate depends on China's judgment on the external factors, both existing and potential ones, that have an impact on China's reform. And whether this judgment is correct depends on whether China understands the strategies and interests of its main competitors. By understanding their strategies and interests, China can find the convergence of the two and seek win-win cooperation. In this way, China can create an environment conducive to reform.

In the world today, the US is the only country that is capable of obstructing China's path to reform. Despite its domestic problems, including its economic decline, power struggle and heavy debts, the one and only superpower is still the largest economy and the most innovative country in the world. With its powerful military strengths and military bases all over the world, the US is the only country that has global combat capabilities; the fact that 70% of financial assets and 80% of commodities are bought and sold with the US dollar means its status as the dominant currency will remain in the foreseeable future.

Through NATO and military alliances with Japan, Korea and Australia, the US has effectively tied 90% of the developed countries to its own security interests; its military infiltration and control are omnipresent. To create a good external environment for domestic development, Chinese diplomacy needs to find its way around the US, a volcano with enormous force. If Sino-US relations are good, the external environment of reform will be good too; otherwise, reform will face great difficulties and risks. Therefore, we have to stress the importance of Sino-US relations to China's emergence.

So what kind of strategy should China adopt? Theoretically, Beijing has two options: return to cold war or move away from it. People who advocate the return to cold war believe that in the next ten years, China and the US will become two poles in international politics, and China should give up its no-alliance policy and form alliances to resist the US and replace the American value of freedom, democracy and human rights with fairness, justice and civilization. Antagonism between the political and military alliance led by China and the military alliance among the US, Japan, Korea, and Australia would divide world politics into two camps. Though the bipolar system may turn to mollification, it is antagonism that the system depends upon; and the expression of antagonism is either hot war or cold war.

As a player in and beneficiary of globalization, China should promote the integration of world economics and politics instead of forming such camps. Even if China could form alliances with 50% of all countries, it would lose the other half. Is dividing the world necessary for China's rise? If so, it would be a disaster for both China and the world.

I believe if Beijing wants to have the situation well in hand, it should move away from the cold war mindset. This means getting rid of the political and military systems left by the cold war, for example NATO and the alliance among the US, Japan, Korea and Australia. In fact, these two military alliances are the foundation for the US as a superpower. What China should do is divide and break down such systems: Shake the foundation of the US' status as a superpower gradually through non-confrontational and non-military means.

In the Asia-Pacific region, this process would achieve a better effect if pushed forward by a greater strategy. Why not consider finding a convergence point with the US in terms of global interests? If Beijing and Washington manage to achieve a new strategic consensus for their global and regional interests, many existing regional mechanisms and arrangements would seem redundant and even oppressive. Of course, the achieving and implementing of such a consensus should be solid and stable so that it can upend the US-Japan military alliance completely and cause the US to lose interest in associations with a marginalized Japan. In this way, the US would realize cooperation with China is less costly, less risky and more beneficial to its national interests.

Of course, some people would consider this option naive and wishful thinking: How could a superpower truly cooperate with China? Then I have to remind them that it was Washington that brought up the strategic concept of G2 five years ago and it was China that turned it down three years ago. Some people may say turning it down was wise since the US just wants to use China as a minion. People who think this way fall into one of the following categories: they lack confidence and knowledge of the gravity of and the US' dependence on China; or they are so blindly confident that they believe China can achieve its national interests on its own; or they, unaware of the logic of international cooperation, are unwilling to pay a price for cooperation by letting a partner have a share of the interest - and they will have to swallow the bitter pill of their refusal to cooperate and pay an even greater price.

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