China’s President Xi Jinping hailed on Thursday a “new positioning” of ties with the United States (US) that envisages cooperation with measured competition, following his summit with President Donald Trump.
Trump’s Beijing visit, the first by a US president in nearly a decade, runs until Friday, at a time when his Iran war is denting domestic approval ratings ahead of mid-term elections.
Xi said both leaders agreed that building a “constructive, strategically stable relationship” would guide ties in the next three years and beyond, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement.
Xi described such ties as based primarily on cooperation but with measured competition for “a normal stability in which differences are controllable, and a lasting stability in which peace can be expected”, the ministry added.
Analysts said the reference to “constructive strategic stability” showed China was following gradations in relations that yield a framework for diplomacy in which it can manage multi-faceted ties with the United States.
Positive, but not yet partners
The new Chinese framing echoed the Clinton-era formulation of “constructive strategic partnership” proposed in 1997 – the most positive following the end of the cold war – and signalled China’s desire to put relations on surer footings.
Beijing had framed ties with Washington in terms of partnership and cooperation in the 2000s and early 2010s.
But increasing competition and rivalry after China overtook Japan to become the world’s second largest economy in 2010, as well as Xi’s ascendance to power in 2012 and Trump-induced volatility since 2016, resulted in language of managed interdependence, strategic competition and conflict-avoidance.
The new framework marks a significant shift away from past “negative characterisations” such as great-power competition, said Wang Wen, a professor at Beijing’s Renmin University.
“The core distinction lies in its emphasis on a positive model of interaction marked by cooperation as the mainstay, together with measured competition, manageable differences, and a foreseeable prospect of peace,” Wang said.
“It’s new language and I think it reflects China’s desire to put more institutional guardrails around US-China relations, both competition and cooperation,” said Joe Mazur, geopolitics analyst at Beijing-based consultancy Trivium China.
China and the US “should be partners, rather than rivals,” Xi said while holding a state banquet for Trump on Thursday.
But frictions, such as those over the Iran conflict and recent US sanctions on Chinese firms, continue to “complicate US-China dynamics” and may test the durability of the new framework, said Zhao Minghao, an international relations expert at Shanghai’s Fudan University.
Even as Xi talked up cooperation, he stressed “utmost caution” by the United States in handling the issue of Taiwan.
“If handled poorly, the two countries could collide or even enter into conflict, pushing the entire China-US relationship into an extremely dangerous situation,” the Chinese leader said.
Trump also invited Xi for a reciprocal trip to the White House on September 24, the first since Trump began his second term last year.
