Direct News: On October 28, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with U.S. Ambassador to China Burns. Burns said during the meeting that he had carefully studied the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and the United States was willing to strengthen communication with China, manage differences, and promote cooperation. How do you view Burns’ statement and what signals does this send?
Special Commentator Zhang Sinan: The US Ambassador to China claimed that he had carefully studied the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and actively expressed his willingness to promote the development of Sino-US relations. This is indeed a rare positive statement for some time, but the question is, to what extent can Burns represent the entire US government behind him?
I noticed that on the same day Burns met with Wang Yi, U.S. Trade Representative Dai Qi told Bloomberg that the U.S. government will be more determined to safeguard its own interests, "until China adopts structural reforms and moves closer to the United States." Compared with Dai Qi's arrogant but implicit, the statement of the American magazine Foreign Policy is more direct and unceremonious: "The Biden administration is unraveling China's ability to continue to develop with unprecedented determination."
Foreign Policy believes that compared with Trump , Biden believes that he has found a more effective "trade war breakthrough", which is to start the Chinese semiconductor industry chain. Just earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Commerce's Industry and Security Bureau issued a latest export control that explicitly required restrictions on China's ability to develop and maintain supercomputers and develop advanced semiconductor industries. The intensity of this export control is completely beyond the limits of "national security" or some "policy tool". Even Foreign Policy said that this is entirely aimed at fundamentally damaging China's economy, and even at the cost of the United States' own economic joint damage.
In addition to unprecedented strength, we should also note that the Biden administration requires the latest export controls to be fully implemented within two weeks, which is completely irrational from an economic perspective. In a sense, it shows that the top leaders of the United States have seriously lacked rational and pragmatic attitudes. The Biden administration is "decoupling" from China at all costs. As US President's Assistant for National Security Affairs Sullivan declared in September that the United States only needed to lead China dynamically, but now it is necessary to let China lag behind the United States as much as possible. And this kind of "decoupling" at all costs will only appear in the technical field, and will spread to other strategic areas of Sino-US relations. I believe we will see the answer soon.
So back to your question, how to view Burns' statement, my answer is four words: be cautious and optimistic. The ambassador of the United States of America expressed his demands to strengthen communication, manage differences and promote cooperation with China, showing that the relationship between the two countries has a positive side that cannot be ignored. China and the United States still have room to move towards each other, but this does not mean that we must place the future of China-US relations on this so-called goodwill. If the United States does not show its due sincerity, although China calls for cooperation, it cannot avoid competition. If the United States really wants to show sincerity in cooperation, it must first fulfill its intention to build a "guardrail" with China to avoid competition sliding towards vicious competition in zero-sum game .
Direct News: Then how do you view the future of Sino-US relations? What impact will the disappearance of rational and pragmatic voices within the Biden administration have on the relationship between the two countries?
Special Commentator Zhang Sinan: I am not pessimistic about the nature and future of Sino-US relations, because no matter how the US government changes, this relationship is not only determined by the United States.
I fully believe that China and the United States can transcend the so-called " Thucydides Trap " and achieve a future of mutual achievement and common development, because China and the United States have no structural contradictions between each other in terms of a free and open world order. The two countries also complement each other more in terms of industrial structure than fight each other. Most importantly, China hates solving the problems of the 21st century with the perspective of the 19th century and the experience of the 20th century. China pursues a future with a shared future for all mankind, rather than a cycle of rise and fall of hegemony and hegemony.
But if Chinese people think like this, it does not mean that Americans will think like this. The belief of Chinese people with kindness does not mean that we must interpret every minimum politeness and respect of Americans as a kind of "goodwill". Just like I wouldn't guess what Burns had read from the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, it is just that it is more necessary for us to understand the most true ideas of the country on the other side of the ocean through the bureaucratic clichés that the US government has always been, whether it is good intention or malicious.
believes that there can be a win-win future between China and the United States, and it is not contradictory to realize the difficulties currently facing this future. China's international vision is great because we are challenging the historical traditions that have lasted for thousands of years.
No matter how the United States claims to be based on the idealistic creed, don’t forget that this country’s foreign strategy always has an extremely realistic side and adheres to the plundering nature of a traditional maritime hegemony country. China is different. We can say that we are the last successor of the collective memory of all mankind that yearns for peace and development after World War II. China is the only nuclear country that adheres to the principle of not using nuclear weapons first. China is the only major country that explicitly rejects the opposition between the state and the state military alliance. China is the only large-scale economy that invests huge investment in infrastructure construction in poor countries. China is also the only country that elevates the concepts of common development, shared destiny and shared destiny to national strategies and implements them specifically into actions.
The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is not only the grand future of the Chinese, but also means that China will take the world away from the historical cycle of suffering due to the logic of hegemony for thousands of years. As Xi Jinping said in the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, we must dare to fight and be good at fighting, strengthen historical confidence, and enhance historical initiative. We do not need to interpret the "good intention" in Americans' words, we only need to obtain their true good intention in the struggle in ways that Americans can understand.
Author丨Zhang Sinan, direct news editor, special commentator of Shenzhen Satellite TV's "Live Broadcast Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan"
(Shenzhen Satellite TV's "Live Broadcast Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan")
