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Editor's note : CGTN's First Voice provides instant commentary on breaking stories. The daily column clarifies emerging issues and better defines the news agenda, offering a Chinese perspective on the latest global events. This article is based on the discussion within the Global Scholar Talk series on U.S.-China relations and the international order, co-hosted by Princeton University Press (China) and CGTN's T-House Opinions.
On January 29, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a video on Twitter that "The relationship between the United States and China is arguably the most important relationship that we have in the world going forward. It's going to shape a lot of the future."
However, to many foreigners' shock, the newly inaugurated U.S. President Joe Biden wants to "Build Back Better" the U.S. and also the world order before his predecessor Donald Trump went into politics. He needs to learn that the world cannot "go back" to where it was as it has significantly changed since four years ago.
It is awkward for the U.S. Democratic Party, which sees itself as a progressive party, to have a new principle of a new president that has the word "back" instead of "forward" in it.
From his election campaign onward, Biden advocates the idea of "Build Back Better". He believes that his nation and the world order have been taken by Trump in the wrong direction and would like to go back to the time and policies when he was the U.S. vice president.
It is even more confusing that many U.S. former diplomats and scholars want to defend the world order shaped either after World War II or by the end of the Cold War that benefits nobody but only the Western elites in the establishment that has already been shaken since four years ago when populism gained its steam.
Among these examples, there are the former U.S. Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice. They respectively wrote their books to warn the Trump administration that without the Western liberal order, the U.S. may fall into fascism, and the importance of defending the Western version of democracy in the post-Cold War order.
Princeton Professor John Ikenberry also wrote a book, A World Safe for Democracy, urging the U.S. to defend the somewhat outdated world order of liberal internationalism. He further explained his thoughts in discussion with Tsinghua Professor Yan Xuetong in a series of Princeton University Press global scholars talk on U.S.-China relations and the international order.
Princeton Professor John G. Ikenberry holds up Tsinghua Professor Yan Xuetong's book "Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers" in the online discussion co-hosted by Princeton University Press (China) and CGTN's T-House Opinions, January 23, 2021. /CGTN
Ikenberry championed his theory by praising that American citizens elected Biden in 2020, "It does matter who won the presidency. It will rebuild the U.S.' status in the world that weakened by Trump. The U.S. has had its 75 years of order building diplomacy. There is a need to reclaim and reinvent the virtues of the liberal order. "
In other words, in these U.S. liberal diplomats and scholars' minds, Trump took the world to a conservative path. That has fragmented the very institutions of the U.S. that were founded by the post-World War II architect, former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Before the nation is going to break into pieces, Biden needs act as a healer like Abraham Lincoln to go back into the Barack Obama years to secure the liberal order.
Trump may have led the U.S. into a crisis, if not a disaster. However, these liberal scholars have also neglected that much has changed since four years ago, and these changes were made certainly not only by Trump and the Republican Party.
The Western world has seen populism surge not only in the U.S. as the anti-establishment authors' novels went to top the New York Times bestsellers list, but also in the UK, Prime Minister Boris Johnson had eventually done the Brexit voted by a referendum. The French "gilets jaunes" people wearing yellow shirts went to storm the avenues in and out Paris.
Besides, in the past year of 2020 alone, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and how different countries dealt with it, China has stood out to be the only growing economy in the world. A pandemic may just change the power strength fundamentally, as history had proved when the plague wiped out one-third of the ancient power Athens' population and relatively weakened its economy compared to its competitor, the ancient kingdom of Sparta.
To those scholars outside America, Biden may not be the best choice, as the world moves in a new direction. Many take the perspective that the Biden years may just well represent and copy the past years of the Obama administration.
Tsinghua Professor Yan Xuetong holds up Princeton Professor John G. Ikenberry's book "A World Safe for Democracy" during the discussion, January 23, 2021. /CGTN
In his discussion with Ikenberry, Yan points out, "With Biden, history is moving backward. Trump has no intention to maintain U.S.' global leadership status. Biden said clearly he would lead not by the example of power, but by the power of example. Then he should lead with an example first in the U.S. if he wants to set an example for the whole world. "
What direction should the U.S. and the world go? It depends on many aspects, but multilateralism and cooperation benefit all countries, whether developing or developed. The new U.S. administration should have this in mind that if it wants to recover from the pandemic, it needs to unite the domestic parties and the foreign countries as well.
No matter what direction the U.S. would go and what examples it may create, it must be into the future, not in its history, and certainly not to build "back", as Biden claims to be.
Going back to history is dangerous. Historian Niall Ferguson warned the Biden administration in a podcast made by Stanford University that a century ago, the former U.S. President Warren Harding wants to do nothing but "go back to normal", and eventually, he made it too normal to achieve anything at all.
To know how to share the future with the emerging powers is a choice for Biden. China has already made an example of giving help to others during the pandemic. It is welcoming others, including the great nation on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, to join.
As Chinese President Xi Jinping said recently in the virtual Davos Agenda 2021 that the path for the world lies ahead in the future, and it is a shared future, "The right approach is to act on the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind."
(Scriptwriter: Xiong Tong)
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