Interview
WASHINGTON – The United States and China, the world’s two largest economies, have to ensure that their bilateral relationship “stays on a predictable, stable track,” which is essential for both countries’ development and global growth, a renowned American scholar says.
As one hand cannot clap, the United States and China have to create “guardrails within this relationship to ensure that the relationship stays on a predictable and stable track and does not go onto those few issues which could really damage the relationship,” Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for China-America Studies, told Xinhua in an interview.
As the two sides once again re-engage and search for areas of commonality, where they are and where they prosper mutually and beneficially, Gupta said he hopes that these areas will far exceed the areas where they have differences.
The expert expressed the hope that the United States will “be able to gradually, very imperceptibly in a way to pivot away from the extreme hostility that had been engendered by the previous administration towards China.”
“I am more hopeful than pessimistic as time goes that the two sides will work out again a mutually beneficial cooperation, but we’ll have to see how that unfolds,” he said.
For example, Gupta pointed out, there is a “huge scope” for economic cooperation, commercial and technologies exchanges between the United States and China in addressing global climate change.
It is “tremendously important” for the world that the United States and China, currently two major emitters, to work together “in not just trying to mitigate carbon emissions, but completely transform the economic structure of the way we live,” he said. – Xinhua
