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Jimmy Carter: China, US should be long-term partners

China.org.cn, September 4, 2014

• China and the United States, the two largest world powers, should stand side by side to face global issues such as climate change, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter said yesterday at a forum in Beijing.

  Jimmy Carter, delivers a keynote speech at the Second Annual G20 Think Tank Summit held on Sep. 3 by Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. [Photo by Wu Jin/China.org.cn]

  Carter made the remark at the opening ceremony of the Second Annual G20 Think Tank Summit organized by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China.

  All the countries in the world are facing global warming, but each country is only presenting its own plan, Carter said. Therefore, if China and the United States can get together and make major recommendations, other countries will probably join them.

  "I hope global warming will be one of the ideas that will bring the two countries together in the future, again as partners, with a partnership lasting not just a few years, but for decades or centuries to come," Carter said.

  Taking the audience back to a bygone era when the late Chinese president Deng Xiaoping was his counterpart, Carter called back a history from which the diplomatic relationship between China and the United States was established.

  "I was very fortunate to be the leader of my country when Deng Xiaoping was leader of his. We didn't know each other personally, but I heard about his fame," Carter recalled.

  According to the 39th U.S. president, whose birthday coincides with the National Day of the People's Republic of China, Washington and Beijing spontaneously announced that they would be establishing diplomatic relations in the middle of December 1978, and almost at the same time dramatic changes started to take place in China with the country's reform and opening up. The diplomatic ties eventually ushered in a new era between the two countries, which had been alienated for almost three decades since the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

  But with China's ongoing double-digit growth for a number of consecutive years, the United States started to treat China as a potential rival and tried to compete with China in many areas, including in Africa.

  Carter said he recently attended a banquet hosted by the White House with 45 African leaders, which was held to strengthen ties between the United States and African countries. But that event reminded him a joke made by David Brooks, the American writer and journalist, who said that China brings in U.S. dollars while the U.S. holds receptions.

  Whether the joke reflects the reality, Carter believes that emerging countries like Russia, Brazil, India, South Africa and China are taking on more and more responsibility and authority.

  "This is not an easy challenge to meet, it is not an easy problem to solve and it is not an easy question to answer," Carter said.

  But the former president and 2002 Nobel Peace Laureate still hoped the two countries can resolve their differences and cooperate in international affairs, such as by bringing peace to African countries which are suffering from domestic conflicts.

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