When US President Joe Biden recently proclaimed at the UN that the United States "is not seeking a new Cold War", many countries must have felt a sense of relief. But with his words still echoing, the United States has moved to piece together AUKUS, upgrade the Quad and enhance the Five Eyes.
In the Cold War, the two camps barely had or needed any trade with one another, and were fighting fiercely as each other's arch enemy. That is certainly not the case today. In today's globalized world, it makes little sense if the United States sticks to a Cold-War styled playbook, and in particular, paints China as the adversary:
First, China and the United States are an indivisible community with shared interests. Despite US attempts at decoupling and disruption of the supply chains and the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, two-way trade still expanded by 8.8 percent in 2020. And in the first eight months this year, bilateral trade rose to 470 billion dollars, up by 36.6 percent year-on-year.
China is also playing a unique and constructive role on important issues, such as Afghanistan, Iran and the Korean Peninsula, in order to safeguard regional peace and stability
Second, China's development is not to supplant other countries but to improve its people's well-being. What the Chinese people are striving for is a peaceful and prosperous life, not global dominance. On the part of the government, resources are mostly put into development, and policies are rolled out to lift the nation and better the lives of every Chinese. What occupies the State Council's weekly meetings is addressing real and immediate concerns of Chinese companies and citizens.
Third, China upholds true multilateralism. Over the past 70 years, China has an uninterrupted track record of honoring its word. It never provoked a war or took one inch of foreign land, and it is the only major country to inscribe peaceful development in its Constitution. In its COVID response, China has provided over 1.6 billion doses of vaccines to the world. Under the G20's Debt Service Suspension Initiative for the poorest countries to navigate the pandemic, China has put off more loan repayments than other G20 members. Recently, China hosted the COP 15 on biodiversity and the UN Global Sustainable Transport Conference in order to facilitate a global transition toward green and low-carbon development. China is also playing a unique and constructive role on important issues, such as Afghanistan, Iran and the Korean Peninsula, in order to safeguard regional peace and stability.
It is said that the United States needs some sort of enemy to get the nation mobilized, but China is not "the enemy". As two major countries in the world, China and the US should help rather than fight each other. Domestically and internationally, much could be achieved with a back-on-track China-US relationship.
The Biden administration is dealing with many domestic priorities, such as COVID-19, economic recovery and infrastructure. These are areas where the two countries could be teammates and partners and bilateral cooperation could be critically important. Leveraging complementarity rather than wasting time and resources in a so-called ideological battle will bring the United States to its intended goals at an earlier date.
For many global issues, there can be no global solution without a certain degree of China-US cooperation. Instead of politicizing and weaponizing the origins-tracing, collaboration for global access to vaccines would end this pandemic better and faster. On climate change, it makes better sense to recognize what China has done and is doing now. Its carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals will not be easily achieved, and their attainment entails painstaking efforts. Apart from announcing that it will not build new coalfired power projects abroad, China has already mobilized the whole country to work toward the "dual carbon" goals.
In the face of a global pandemic, what humanity needs is a community with a shared future, not the survival of the fittest. What kind of world we leave for the future generations hinges not on the sophistication of weapons but on the soundness of the ecosystem, not on wars and conflicts but on peace and harmony.
In a 2015 Hollywood blockbuster movie, The Martian, NASA and the China National Space Administration worked together for the astronaut to return to the Earth. Perhaps, it is time to give up the playbook of those Cold War-style spy movies and replace it with that of The Martian. This may give this world a greater chance of success.
The author is a Beijing-based observer of international affairs.
The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.