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Editor's note: Mustafa H. Sayed is executive director of the Pakistan-China Institute. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
The future of U.S.-China relations should center on three Rs: reset, review and reform. In order for the two countries to advance their national interests, it is important to pause, reflect and start with a clean slate.
Of course, this does not imply that either begins unprecedented cooperation, but that both should make new rules of the game, identify and acknowledge each other's red lines, and agree to cooperate and compete within these new rules of the game. The Three Rs are based on the premise that neither China nor the U.S. can "go at it alone," and being the two largest economies of the world, the status quo has to be replaced with a functional working relationship.
A reset in ties is imperative because the Trump administration's unchecked rhetoric and general recklessness towards China should not be carried over to the Biden administration. The new U.S. administration and China should start afresh, and look toward the future.
Simultaneously, both sides should undertake a comprehensive review of bilateral ties and take stock of what has and has not worked, with particular focus on key areas of cooperation that may include climate change, research and innovation on preempting future pandemics, bilateral and multilateral trade, as well as strengthening multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization so that multilateral cooperation is re-enforced and given legitimacy, rather than weakened.
Fundamental to the three Rs is reform. For starters, the "Cold War" mindset of containment and confrontation should be reformed and replaced with a forward-looking approach of both competition and cooperation. Also, a comprehensive policy to engage and negotiate on issues where there is strategic divergence replacing the existing policy of impulsive and sustained confrontation.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks before signing an executive order in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 24, 2021. /Getty
Recently, the U.S. has been consistently intervening in the internal affairs of China, for example issuing statements on and picking sides in Hong Kong, seeking to strengthen Taiwan as an independent entity at the cost of China's sovereignty, and so forth. Similarly, consistently accusing China of being the source of the COVID-19 pandemic or alleging that China has silenced or incarcerated Chinese citizens who shared information on the COVID-19 has so far not advanced any of U.S. national interests.
Apart from raising the political temperature, this information warfare has just led to furthering the bilateral trust deficit, forcing smaller countries to pick sides, and diverting attention from important issues like cooperating on combating COVID-19, reforming global public health governance, and working towards a post-pandemic global economic recovery.
For China and the U.S. to protect and further their interests vis-à-vis each other, the three Rs provide a healing touch that can be implemented via a three-pronged dialogue which should comprise both countries' media/think-tanks, business leaders and governments. The three-pronged dialogue should be jointly organized, sustained and supervised under a special joint working group that should be representative of all the three aforementioned stakeholders from both sides. The first two are essential to break myths and replace them with an evidence-based understanding of each other, in particular, understanding the Chinese governance model, its delivery of the most basic human right of a right to a better life and how it has stimulated unprecedented economic growth. And to those believing that China does not aim to replace the United States as a superpower –which a glimpse into Chinese history would testify.
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