It is expected that the summit will polarize the world and new blocks will emerge. It is a bad sign, as the world direly needs cooperation and joint efforts to tackle the issues of pandemic, climate change, food insecurity, shortage of water, and energy.
Democracy is a means, not an end. It is a means to bring good life to all citizens. Democracy should not exist just in form and it has to be substantive.
The great rejuvenation that China has been pursuing is not aimed at dominating the world, but more at making possible the impossible in the fields of economy, science, technology, culture and improving people’s living standards.
Washington must drop the idea that US democracy summits and various ad hoc coalitions can replace the United Nations as the core institution of the present international system.
The fact that President Xi and President Biden were forced to discuss ways of avoiding conflict underscores the perilous state of China-US relations.
Since the awful Anchorage meeting earlier this year after the new administration took power, Biden’s approach to China—which I’ve described as a ‘three-headed monster,’ i.e., compete, cooperate, and contain—has appeared tragically clear and doomed to fail.
The dangers of miscalculation in this already tense region are multiplied when spy missions are apparently undertaken inside national territorial waters.
The renewal of China-U.S. ping-pong diplomacy comes much to the delight of table tennis fans, the sports community at large, and people supporting China-U.S. friendship on both sides.
Despite many ups and downs since the early 1970s, the U.S. and China have benefited immensely from the political, economic and cultural interactions between the two nations.
Realistically, trust building will take a very long time and much concrete action given the present morass in relations. But it is wise and prudent to begin such a path and the Xi-Biden virtual summit can certainly be a starting point for renewed effort.
To treat China as a partner will do the U.S. and its people much more good than to look at China as a competitor.
The orgy of gun violence is a tragic consequence of this broken system.
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