On the 35th anniversary of Sino-US diplomatic relations
- By Jin Canrong and Dong Chunling
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 4, 2014
This year marks the 35th anniversary of the establishment of Sino-US diplomatic relations. Thirty-five years may be negligible from the perspective of human history. Yet for Sino-US relations, these have been unusual years of extraordinary, far-reaching significance.
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This year marks the 35th anniversary of the establishment of Sino-US diplomatic relations. |
In the 35 years, trade between the two countries has grown from a meager $2450 million in 1979 to over $500 billion; personnel exchanges have risen from the thousands in the beginning to nearly 4 million in 2013. Bilateral collaboration on regional and international issues has continued to improve in both breadth and depth. Today, the two are not only coping with global challenges such as the financial crisis and climate change, but are communicating and coordinating closely over such regional concerns as the Korean nuclear issue, the Iran nuclear issue, and the Syria crisis. Even those most optimistic about Sino-US relations in 1979 could not have anticipated the relationship could have reached its current level.
In the 35 years since China and the United States normalized relations, the United States won the Cold War, experienced a golden period of national development in the 1990s, and has seen its national might reaching a historic high; while China has witnessed a peaceful and stable environment for national development, gradually integrated itself into the international community, made impressive headway in reform and opening up, and made conspicuous achievements economically. The Sino-US relationship has become a precious example of two major countries of different social systems, patterns of civilization, and in different stages of development achieving “win-win” outcomes through cooperation. It is on such a basis that we have the confidence to put forward the concept of a new type of major-country relations between China and the United States, and the confidence to put it into practice.
Looking back on Sino-US relations over the last 35 years, a core prerequisite for success is that the two countries must formulate a certain strategic foundation. In terms of both population and geographic scales, China and the United States are indisputable “gigantic countries”. Their relations are inherently strategic. And a certain kind of strategic foundation is indispensable. The 35 years of Sino-US relations can be divided into three stages. From 1979 to 1989, the strategic foundation of the relationship was the need to join hands and prevent threats from Soviet expansionism. Sino-US strategic cooperation was not only a positive variant preserving international peace and stability in the Cold War era, but also promoted change in the international order. From 1992 to 2009, the strategic foundation for the relationship was the roadmap for national development proposed by Deng Xiaoping that highlighted a peaceful rise within the existing international system. China strived to integrate itself into the US-dominated international system. The United States accepted China and to some extent helped to build China into an important partner in the process of globalization. From 2009 on, with the tense rivalry at the Copenhagen climate meeting and the US “pivoting” to the Asia-Pacific as hallmarks, China and the United States have sunk into a vicious circle where the strategic foundation for bilateral ties loosened, strategic competition intensified, and strategic suspicion deepened. There has been an imperative need to find a new “ballast” to stabilize Sino-US relations. The proposal of the new type of major-country relationship is an important attempt to build a new strategic foundation for Sino-US relations. Whether or not the two could successfully establish such a relationship entails not only efforts by both parties, but also some luck from the perspective of history, because it depends on whether the peoples of both countries can demonstrate the awareness and courage to break through the fatalism of major power confrontation.
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