Monday's telephone conversation between State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is being widely viewed as a positive signal that both Beijing and Washington are trying to keep the channels of communication open at a time when the world's most important bilateral relations have encountered severe difficulties and challenges.
Relations between the two sides have been foundering as the US has singled out China as a strategic rival and has been endeavoring to suppress China's development. Constant and exacerbating US provocations in relation to China's core interests, especially its brinkmanship on the Taiwan question, have aroused global concerns of a head-on conflict between the two countries.
Given this, it is hoped that the phone call acts as a sedative to calm the fraught situation. Blinken once again said that the US stands ready to cooperate with China, but with the caveat that the two sides explore the basis of their relations, reiterating that they need to responsibly manage their competition.
But a sense of responsibility is exactly what the US is bereft of. The US needs to refrain from creating new obstacles for bilateral relations and stop distorting China's development goals. To this end, Wang proposed that the US side carefully study the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China to fully understand China's modernization path and objectives.
The report not only highlights the consistency of China's foreign policy, including toward the US, but also delivers the important message that while pursuing its peaceful development path, China will not submit to blackmail, pressure tactics, blockades or containment. The report makes clear that China will continue to promote the development of a human community with a shared future and stand firm in protecting international fairness and justice on the basis of true multilateralism.
Even though it is forced to defend its interests in the face of the US' provocations, China still views its relations with the US within the larger global picture and remains committed to pursuing stable and constructive relations with it. As Wang pointed out to Blinken, China's development brings new opportunities to the world, which is a source of stability amid the turbulent international situation.
The congress report makes China's domestic and foreign policies open and transparent, and its strategic intentions open and above board. This not only means that any attempts to distort them are doomed to failure, but it also reveals the intentions behind such efforts. Meanwhile, US politicians can acquire a clearer, deeper and correct understanding of China by carefully reading the report. This will ensure that they avoid making any policy mistakes based on misunderstandings and misjudgments.
Almost all the misgivings US politicians harbor about China stem from their pathological Cold War mentality. Reading the report, they would realize that healthy China-US relations serve the interests of both countries.