BEIJING, May 14 (Reuters) – The president of China, Xi Jinping, hailed on Thursday a ‘new stance’ in the ties with the United States, which envisions cooperation with a measured competition, after meeting with President Donald Trump.
Trump’s visit to Beijing, the first by a U.S. president in nearly a decade, runs through Friday, at a moment when the war against Iran is undermining his domestic approval ratings ahead of the midterm elections.
Xi said that both leaders agreed that building a ‘constructive and strategically stable relationship’ would guide the ties over the next three years and beyond, according to a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
Xi described these ties as primarily based on cooperation, but with a measured competition for ‘a normal stability in which differences are controllable and a lasting stability in which peace can be expected’, the ministry added.
Analysts said that the reference to ‘constructive strategic stability’ shows that China is following gradations in the relations that create a diplomatic framework in which it can manage multifaceted ties with the United States.
POSITIVES, BUT STILL NOT PARTNERS
The new Chinese framework echoed the Clinton era formulation of ‘constructive strategic partnership’ proposed in 1997 — the most positive after the end of the Cold War — and signaled China’s desire to place the relationship on more secure footing.
Beijing had structured ties with Washington in terms of partnership and cooperation in the 2000s and early 2010s.
But the rise in competition and rivalry after China overtook Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy in 2010, as well as Xi’s ascent to power in 2012 and the volatility induced by Trump since 2016, resulted in a language of managed interdependence, strategic competition and conflict prevention.
The new framework marks a significant shift away from the past ‘negative characterizations’ of the era, such as competition among great powers, said Wang Wen, a professor at Renmin University of China in Beijing.
‘The main distinction lies in its emphasis on a positive model of interaction marked by cooperation as the main pillar, together with a measured competition, manageable differences and a predictable outlook of peace,’ Wang said.
‘It’s a new language and I think it reflects China’s desire to place more institutional guardrails around the U.S.-China relationship, both in terms of competition and cooperation,’ said Joe Mazur, a geopolitical analyst at Trivium China, based in Beijing.
China and the U.S. ‘should be partners, rather than rivals,’ Xi said during a state banquet for Trump on Thursday.
But frictions, such as those from the Iran conflict and the recent U.S. sanctions against Chinese companies, continue to ‘complicate the U.S.-China dynamics’ and could test the durability of the new framework, Zhao Minghao, a specialist in international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai, said.
Even while talking about cooperation, Xi stressed the United States’ ‘utmost caution’ in handling the Taiwan issue, the democratically governed island claimed by China, although Taipei rejects the claim.
‘If not handled properly, the two countries could collide or even come to blows, taking the entire China-U.S. relationship into an extremely dangerous situation,’ the Chinese leader said.
