BEIJING: China’s President Xi Jinping hailed on Thursday a “new positioning” of ties with the United States 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, strategically stable” ties 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.
“It’s new language and I think it reflects China’s desire to put more institutional guardrails around U.S.-China relations, both competition and cooperation,” said Joe Mazur, geopolitics analyst at Beijing-based consultancy Trivium China.
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, the democratically governed island claimed by China, although Taipei rejects the contention.
“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.
