What’s the future of China-US relations? | The Bottom Line

hi i'm steve clemons and i have a question are relations between the two biggest powers in the world china and the united states on an unstoppable collision course let's get to the bottom line despite their differences the u.s and china have gotten by for decades up until recently american manufacturers love moving their operations at china on human rights questions like concerns about repression of muslims in sinjar or suppression of rights in hong kong the nations are passionately divided in washington there are fears that china's astounding economic growth and its attainment of technological and scientific parity in many key industries of the future threaten america's lead position in the world and they see china as working hard to situate itself as the most powerful nation on earth and if that's not enough of a hot mess of challenges a bipartisan group of u.s senators and house members have now followed on the trip to taiwan by house speaker nancy pelosi who defied both the white house and china in urging her not to take that trip china sees taiwan as part of its sovereign territory but the deal has been that china won't take the island by force while the u.s promises not to recognize taiwan's independence that ambiguity has kept the region stable for decades in protest of pelosi's visit china has halted numerous bilateral talks in collaboration on everything from climate change to drug trafficking to regional security and military coordination and president joe biden has stalled any action on lifting trade sanctions imposed by his predecessor donald trump on chinese imports but despite the downward spiral the two nations are really joined at the hip doing more than 700 billion a year in trade with each other so what are they strategic partners strategic competitors or strategic enemies and what does it mean to you to me and to the rest of the world joining me today is china's ambassador the united states qin gong prior to this post he served as the deputy minister of foreign affairs in beijing ambassador it's great to be with you today and talk to you and i really want our audience to understand the chinese dashboard when it comes to taiwan we've seen the trip of speaker house speaker nancy pelosi you warned her not to go and said there would be consequences why does taiwan matter so significantly to you strategically thank you steve for having me nancy police's visit to taiwan was reckless and provocative because it upgraded the substantive relations between united states and taiwan and it validates the u.s commitments in the three joint communiques of china and the united states that there's only one china and the government of the people's republic of china is the sole legal government representing the whole and the same china and the united states will not develop official links with taiwan and nancy pelosi's visit to taiwan we have heard and we have seen what she did and what he said it's not an official visit he said very clearly in her statement upon arrival in taiwan that her visit is official and she herself is not a person in the street she's number three in the u.s government and she carries a great political sensitivities so by going to taiwan declaring that the united states sides with the italian winds authority who which you know put the taiwan independence on its political agenda in the parties the parties of democratic progressive parties constitution is a show of the united states emboldening taiwan independence forces you know the consequences are very serious as we have warned the u.s side repeatedly now we are dealing with the fallout of her visit one of the things that i have been surprised by after her visit was that while president biden did not ask her not to go the national security bureaucracy the pentagon various national security officials that work for president biden were very concerned about her her visit and thought that it would be a trigger were you heartened in any way to see that divide in the government that there were a lot of people in the u.s government who did not support her trip well we only pay attention to the end result the congress is a part of a u.s government and the congress is obliged to respect and follow the american foreign policy in any country there's only one firm policy so you can't say that the executive branch has one and the congress has another one and we are dissatisfied with uh what has happened already and we don't believe that executive branch of the united states have done enough to stop her going what is china trying to achieve in the world so first of all china is working for delivering a better life to its own people you know this is uh at the centerpiece of the mission of the communist party of china and the government of china so what we are doing is to you know make our self stronger and prosperous so that we can satisfy our people's desire for a better life and at the same time you know china can have many more to deliver for world peace security and common development and china is a force for peace and stability but regrettably my country is being misperceived and miscalculated some people see china as a challenge or even a threat trying to replace united states this is not our it's not our intention so we want to have a stable cooperative relations with united states because we do believe that china and united states have a massive share responsibilities and common interests you know we have our challenges at home i think that the first thing to do for each of us to manage our own affairs well and a good relationship between china and united states will serve the interests of our two countries and will meet the desire of the international community for peace security and for joint efforts to tackle the common challenges the international community is facing and sadly the status quo of china-u.s relations is very worrisome it's going downhill this is because as i mentioned that china is being misperceived and calculated and china-u.s relations now is being driven by fear not by the common interests and by the common responsibilities of our countries you know people forget that you know the bilateral trade volume annually between our two countries have exceeded the you know 750 billion u.s dollars people forget that before covet you know there are five million mutual visits between our two countries and people forget that in china united states are one of the most important trading partners to each other and the people forget there are there are hundreds of thousands of chinese students you know starting in united states and more and more american young people they choose china to study so i think it's time to bring back common sense common interests and common responsibility back to the center stage of u.s china relations on our differences and disagreements cannot justify confrontation well i've heard you recently used the term threat phobia and using the escalation of rhetoric over taiwan in the united states as part of that what do you think is driving american worries and concerns about chinese behavior from your perspective i think there's indeed a fear or china phobia in the united states and it's spreading is that racism i well maybe you can make a judgment but i do feel that you know in this country the asian hate is on the rise and the chinese scientists chinese students are feel more and more unsafe in the country and our normal interactions cooperations in various fields are now being affected negatively by fear i think a lot of americans look at what they see in china and taiwan and hong kong and some of what they see are say the zero covid policy where many people are locked in their residence for a very long period of times and we've seen the youtube videos etc people and their frustration or in hong kong we saw massive protests that were were put down and a lot of americans because they believe that that was a democracy movement or they see taiwanese that worry about you know their future autonomy and and even some of them if you said want independence there's a sort of affinity that that many americans um feel for that and i guess i'm interested when it comes to triggering this crisis again in the future what is your response on those things how can china either respond on those situations to alleviate americans concerns that china is trying to squelch autonomy and you know basically basic freedoms and human rights to have a more trusted relationship there i mean i i'm just sort of interested in why taiwan is so such an exploitable situation that that it can lead to a quick escalation like it did and i think in part of it is because so many americans um basically have empathy for freedom well the question of taiwan fundamentally speaking it's not about democracy or freedom it's about china's national sovereignty and the territorial integrity it's about the national dignity of chinese people the historical fact is that china has been part taiwan has been part of china since ancient times and in the history taiwan has been was separated from its motherland by the dutch colonials and the japanese invaders but the chinese people we worked so hard at the huge cost to get kevin back to the motherland so people need to understand history and need to know the international law so what is the international law one china principle kurt campbell who is president biden's coordinator for indo-pacific affairs he's a long-time asia hand has actually said don't believe the chinese on this that they that peaceful reunification is not uh the agenda that they are seeking that they use nancy pelosi's trip um as a pretext to position itself better and to take advantage of this moment a fairly strident um claim from from uh kurt campbell i'd just be interested in how you see that moment what what what were you doing to send the signals that this would be um troublesome i don't know based on what uh this american senior official uh openly said that don't believe china will uh practice uh or will work for peaceful reunification as i mentioned earlier you know people on both sides of the taiwan street are all are competitors you know and we will do our best to achieve peaceful education but we will not renounce the unpeaceful means this is not targeting at the chinese people in taiwan this is to deter a handful of taiwan independent separate forces and to deter their foreign intervention so that we can best protect the prospect of peaceful reunification is there any way to get back to a healthier relationship from your perspective firstly china doesn't believe that decoupling is in the interest of either china or united states and it will hurt both of us and it will hurt the whole world giving you know the weight and the the influence and responsibilities of china and the u.s and secondly we do not want to decouple no we want more exchanges and more cooperation to get this relationship out of the current difficulties we need to uh take some very uh important uh principle to heart that is you know this relationship should be built on the principle of mutual respect mutual trust peaceful coexistence and the win-win cooperation as proposed by president xi i remember when then vice president biden helped arrange the sunni land summit with uh xi jinping and barack obama and i was with vice president biden in china when he met xi jinping the first time and there seemed to be a very good relationship a relationship of mutual respect and vice president biden now president biden told me that he respected xi jinping and thought that he was a forward thinker do you think there's a level of trust still in that relationship and mutual respect or do you think it has been now spoiled so badly by the events that you've been concerned about well i'm very concerned about the level of trust between china and the us simply because that china is being seen as a challenge and simply because the china phobia is widely spread in the u.s so if you see somebody as a friend or partner it's something but if you see somebody as as a thread or a challenge no it's a totally different story so how to restore trust we need to back to the very basics that is to have a fair and objective of china's intention of development and to bear in mind our common interests and the common responsibility which believe we believe that the far out outweigh our differences and the disagreements we should not let differences or disagreements uh disagreements in the way of the development of our relations and our differences and this and the disagreements should not justify you know confrontation and hostility hostilities ambassador years ago when then premier hujin tao was visiting washington i was seated next to a guy who was the equivalent of the director of the policy planning staff of of your ministry of foreign affairs so i said oh this is a great opportunity tell me what's china's grand strategy in the world and his response to me kind of joking was how to keep you americans distracted in small middle eastern countries which had a ring of truth in it in that era what is china's grand strategy today so china's grant strategy is to save god world peace security and the joining hands with people of all other countries for common development and shared prosperity and we want to have a peaceful and friendly international environment to for us to concentrate on our domestic development which will deliver a better lives for chinese people nothing more nothing else and i want i'm an ambassador my role is trying to distract united states from fear of china and from china phobia and the world is big enough to accommodate china and united states let me give you a story the first uh secretary of treasury is hamilton and there's a musical called the you know hamilton and he had a political enemy that is uh ellen burr at that time he was a vice president of the united states yes and the end result was not happy the two men to say the least had a deal yeah and at the end of the deal vice president bird lamented that the world is big enough for me and mr hellmuth so let's look at the world today and let's look at china-u.s relations i want to borrow mr burr's remarks that the world is big enough for china and united states and we don't need to have the tragic incident more than 200 years to repeat itself today well ambassador chin gong chinese ambassador united states i really appreciate your candor and for you joining us today and talking us through these issues thank you so much thank you so what's the bottom line today we talked about the future of u.s china relations my quick bottom line is that the two top global powers will always struggle for dominance brinkmanship and rivalry are really baked into this relationship forever but the cataclysm that would come if the u.s and china work harder to separate than to cooperate would probably doom us all so another way must be found to avoid a catastrophic collision but this week we're also marking the killing of one of our dearest colleagues shireen abu aklab by israeli forces in janine last may shireen was a phenomenal journalist and objective witness to events that she reported on so that all of us would have insights into what's happening she was killed for doing her job analysis has shown that an israeli bullet ended her life and yet no one has been held accountable impunity is incredibly dangerous and the death of shireen is a placeholder for the harassment the detention the torture and sometimes murder of journalists around the world i hope you will think of her today as we call for authorities to bring her killers the justice that she and we deserve and that's the bottom line [Music] you

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Keywords: What’s the future of China-US relations?, united states, united states of America, china, china usa, china us, china us Taiwan, china us news, china us war, us china news, us china, us china Taiwan, the bottom line, the bottom line al Jazeera, bottom line, bottom line al Jazeera, al Jazeera bottom line, al Jazeera the bottom line, Al Jazeera live, al jazeera live tv news English, al Jazeera, al Jazeera news, al Jazeera tv, al Jazeera english

Id: FZoRSu5mttU

Length: 24min 4sec (1444 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 18 2022