Complex situation makes bilateral ties stronger

Both China and the United States have realized the world has changed dramatically and the global situation has never been more complicated with one thorny issue after another emerging from various fronts and places. The world has never faced with more challenges than it does today.

On the economic front, for example, the world is facing "the most serious global economic crisis in generations," as put by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Tens of thousands of factories including those in China were forced to close down as a result of the financial crisis originated in the United States. Millions of people across the globe have become jobless. This is a situation that major countries like China and the United States have to deal with.

American foreign policy, shaped for decades by the Cold War with the former Soviet Union, is adjusting to post-Cold War realities. The dangerous but relatively simple bipolar world of two competing nuclear superpowers has dissolved into a unipolar or multipolar world, which is evolving to be more complicated with the financial crisis as a tipping point.

US foreign and national security policy has already shifted from containing the Soviet communism to addressing conflicts in smaller, but still dangerous hotspots throughout the world, including Afganistan, the Korea Peninsula, Iran and some other areas.

For China, the current global economic recession also posed a great challenge to its economic and social development, as a slowed-down pace of development to some extent would mean possible social unrest, which will definitely damage its achievements scored over its three decades of hard work.

Therefore, it is only natural that China, the third largest economy in the world, and the United States, the superpower, would go to the meeting room to find solutions together in the face of the common challenges and woes brought forward by the current tough world situation.

Mutual needs play bigger role

The economies of China and the United States are closely intertwined. China holds more than 800 billion dollars in US Treasury securities, and is Washington's biggest creditor. This status heightens Beijing's influence over Washington and increases its exposure to the battered US economy.

China hopes the United States would adopt policies that will protect the value of its investments.

On the one hand, the United States is obviously concerned about China's possible selling off of its US Treasury securities as well.

The US administration projects that its deficit for this year will hit 1.84 trillion dollars, a record high and four-times higher than the previous mark set last year.

All in all, both China and the United States have adjusted their policies so as to adapt to the changing situation. Both countries are keenly interested in each other's economic recovery and cooperation in world affairs so as to create a win-win outcome.

(Xinhua News Agency July 30, 2009)