In October this year, US Treasury Secretary John Snow, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have visited China one after another, US President George W. Bush will also visit China in November; later, Chinese President Hu Jintao will pay a visit to the United States; high-level interactions between China and America appears to be very frequent. At the same time, discussions, studies and judgment on "China's rise" and "China threat" have been carried on with unprecedented enthusiasm, demonstrating a kind of contradictory mindset of the US community in its looking upon China.

Sino-US relations may be a pair of most complicated state-to-state relations since the end of World War II.

From the founding of New China in 1949 to Richard M. Nixon's China visit in 1972, Sino-US relationship was a kind of strategic hostility, antagonistic and mutually isolated relations. Between 1972 and 1989, a certain kind of strategic cooperative relations was formed between China and the United States, but large amounts of structural contradictions still existed between them. After the Cold War, Sino-US ties carried a kind of more complicated, diversified, uncertain and confused characteristic. On the one hand, there were more and more points of intermingled interests of the two sides, on the other hand, structural contradictions between both sides were on the increase, and there appeared the possibility for the intensification of some of these contradictions.

The future of China-US relations, to a great extent, depends on how the two sides approach and act with each other.

In recent years, an important topic of discussions among US academic circles is how to approach and cope with China's rise. On this issue, there has appeared in the United States two entirely opposed opinions: One is the "China threat theory", holding that economically China has stepped up global expansion and militarily has broken regional balance and has thus constituted a kind of challenge to the United States, which is in the style of postwar German and Japanese rises. Second is the "China peace theory" or the "China opportunity theory", believing that China has no intention to confront the United States in an all-round way, if the United States regards China as a powerful partner, then China's rise will not be a problem. China's economic growth is beneficial to the world economy, and economic globalization has provided the only opportunity for the Western world. The aforesaid views reflect the degree of complexity of Sino-US relations, as well as the contradictory strategic anxiety and expectation of the US society.

In the history of international relations, there did exist the phenomenon of "two persons in fighting are enemies, two persons in harmony are friends", as well as the phenomenon about the automatic realization of the prediction on an "imaginary enemy". So, it is very important for countries to adopt an attitude of looking at each other face to face. In recent years, think-tank security dialogs have been carried out between China and the United States, and frequency of high-level dialogs has been speeded up, this is helpful for the two countries to eliminate strategic misjudgment, increase confidence and dispel doubts. Since Sino-US relationship is complicated, it must be approached with a sober and rational attitude, Any move to incite sentiment would not help matters, and can only poison the inter-state atmosphere.

From the perspective of reality, China's mid-term development goal to realize a well-off society in an all-round way, the Chinese method to solve problems arising in the course of rapid economic growth is to implement the scientific concept of development and construct a conservation-mined society. It should be said that China's development mode carries a very strong inward self-discipline color and is a kind of self-conscious choice made under a global visual angle. The gravity of China's foreign relations is to build an international environment of peace, stability and common prosperity, This kind of pursuit will not constitute a challenge to the core interests of the United States. If the United States did not challenge China's core interests on the question of national reunification, there would not exist major strategic conflicting point between the two countries. As a matter of fact, in their contracts over the past 30 years and more, China and the United States have developed a kind of relationship going deep into the organisms of the two societies, the inter-flow volume of commodity, capital, personnel and technology has been so great that a kind of structurally interdependence or strategic dependence has been formed. The deepening of relations has led to an increase in friction points, at the same time, both sides find it hard to bear the price of the break-up of relations. Given this situation, perhaps it would be hard to avoid quarrels between China and the United States in the future, but solving problems through dialogs, negotiation and mutual accommodation should be a consensus of the two sides.

Critics say that US strategy toward China is being evolved from "contact plus containment" to "harmony plus restraint". This comment reflects two backgrounds: One is China's development and the enhancement of its international status, second is the deepening bilateral relationship between China and the United States. China's development is determined mainly by its internal factors, therefore, "containment" and other external factors can't play a decisive role, the evolution from "containment" to "restrain" contain more or less a feeling of helplessness. For politicians, the most fundamental wisdom should be refraining from stopping things that are bound to happen. America should hold such an attitude toward China's development. For China, in the course of development, the most important thing is to have universal virtue, the intelligence of knowing the world, a clear estimation of oneself, and do one's work wholeheartedly, quietly and diligently.

By People's Daily Online