Sino-US summit has three enlightenments

Sino-US summit was held in the White House on April 20th. The short submit lasted no longer than half a day, but served as the beautiful climax of President Hu's visit to the United States and quickly became a focal point in the international community. The reason lies in the special importance of the Chinese and American relations to the global strategic pattern as well as the complexity of the current Sino-US relations.

Generally speaking, the overall situation of the current Sino-US relations is relatively stable. American decision-makers' proposal on the so-called "responsible stakeholders" theory , in which it anticipates China to become a responsible participant in the international system, has indicated that the US has started to adjust its thought so as to treat China's rapid growth by a more practical posture and look forward to cooperating with China on the global business.

Usually, the bilateral frictions will increase when two countries approach to each other more closely. This is the fundamental reason why China and America reported more problems in many areas such as economics and trade, human rights, security, and regional mutual trust. If one exaggerates these frictions, he would easily become pessimistic about Sino-US relations. But if he puts these questions into a broad scenario in which Sino-US relations gradually move towards a thorough and mature level, he would find out that these problems are simply natural phenomena that occur during the spiralling up of the Sino-US relations. Comparing with the overall stable framework of the Sino-US relations, these problems are the secondary contradictions.

If observing the summit from this perspective, three enlightenments can be found.

First of all, both countries' leaders gave priority to constructive and cooperative relationship, emphasized cooperation and common interest, and diligently obtained a long-term and stable framework of Sino-US relations. President Hu stressed that both China and the US should take a broad and long-term view. President Bush claimed that he is willing to see China rising as a peaceful and prosperous country. On the core issue of Sino-US relations, the Taiwan issue, President Bush reiterated that the US persists on one China policy and does not support "Taiwan independence". Both sides emphasized on the importance of cooperation on the nuclear issues in North Korea and Iran. In fact, the vital significance of the summit just lies in the re-establishment of the framework of a long-term constructive, cooperative and strategic relations between the two countries.

Secondly, the leaders of the two countries honestly exchanged their views with each other and looked out upon the differences in between, which manifested a realistic spirit and created a new diplomatic pattern between the Chinese and American leaders. Chinese government, on the one hand, diligently made up the trade deficit between the US and China, on the other hand, promised that China does not seek large quantity of trade surplus. President Hu explained the detailed procedure about how to promote domestic demand and transform economic growth mode during his visit. In terms of intellectual property rights issues, both sides voiced their stance and attitudes. Just like President Bush said after the summit, "what I said to President Hu are all from the bottom of my heart." After five meetings through last year, President Hu and President Bush not only established good personal relationship, but also become more and more familiar with the way of exchanges in which both sides are very frank and sincere. This is an important symbol that demonstrates Sino-US relations have become more and more mature.

Thirdly, both President Hu and President Bush have been actively exploring a possible way to further develop Sino-US relations in the future. The long-term development of the bilateral relations requires more than economic and trade exchanges and security cooperation. New channels for wide-ranging exchanges should be established. Hu chose an "economic and trade visit" in Seattle as the kickoff of his state visit, then a "political visit" in Washington D.C. as the star turn, finally a "cultural visit" at Yale University as the epilogue. This actually reflects the basic mentality of the Chinese government in developing the future Sino-US relations. That is: an emphasis on both economic foundation and strategic relations, and a focus on both cultural exchanges and social communications. Meanwhile, the two sides also achieved widespread common consensus on issues such as energy cooperation and non- traditional security cooperation.

By People's Daily Online; The author Yuan Peng is deputy director of US Studies Institute of China Institutes for Contemporary International Relations