China chamber heads calls for more Sino-US cooperation

The United States and China must work together to advance mutual interests and, more importantly, to promote world stability and prosperity, Xu Chen, chairman of China General Chamber of Commerce-USA (CGCC), said Tuesday at the Vison China forum in New York.

By working together and sharing "state social responsibilities", the world's two largest economies can promote growth in the context of a "community of shared future", he said at the event held at the Asia Society and co-hosted by China Daily and the CGCC.

Xu disagreed with those who argue that China's growing economic strength poses a threat to the US and therefore should be contained.

"China's remarkable growth has offered great opportunities to the US, for China is now capable of sharing more ‘social responsibilities' on the world stage and has become a stronger partner for the US," he said. "Our two countries can take the world's challenges and risks and contribute more to global economic growth, political stability and social progress."

Xu said China stood with the US during financial crises, benefiting both nations and the world.

In 1997, the Thai baht fell sharply and financial markets in Japan and Hong Kong were threatened with collapse. The Japanese yen fell to about 150-to-1 against the US dollar and that threatened other economies in the region. Had the Chinese yuan depreciated as sharply as the yen, the global economy probably would have fallen into recession, he said.

"China withstood the pressure of depreciation and even narrowed the floating range of the yuan against the US dollar," Xu said. "China's move helped East Asian countries stabilize financially and avoided the spillover of a current crisis."

The result, he said, was that the US and European economies escaped major fallout from the Asian crisis.

In 2008, the collapse of the subprime mortgage market hammered the US economy and the Federal Reserve adopted Quantitative Easing to avoid a looming liquidity crisis, a problem China did not face, he explained.

"China had every reason not to echo America's easy monetary policy," Xu said. "At that crucial time, China worked in concert with the quantitative easing measures of the United States by adopting a proactive fiscal policy and a prudent and moderately easing monetary policy from the standpoint of maintaining a stable global economic ecosystem."

Cooperation between the world's economic giants helped to stabilize the world's economy while "vicious competition" would have deepened the crisis and damaged both nations, he said.

Citing a pertinent Chinese saying that "No eggs could stay intact under an overturned nest", Xu said no one would have benefited from confrontation rather than cooperation during past financial crises.

"If China and the US see each other as a threat and refuse to work with each other, to the degree as the extremist voices had wished, then whoever is the winner, the downfall of the global economy would be the ‘overturned nest' where no single country in the world would escape," he said.

Xu concluded, "I believe that China will gladly work hand-in-hand with the US and jointly promote a more peaceful, stable and prosperous global economy."