Op-Ed Contributors

When will the US ever learn?

By Wang Yusheng (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-09-07 07:58

Many East Asian countries (including South Korea and Vietnam) seem to have sought help from the US, but they are not likely to join forces with it to pose a "threat" to China.

Lest it be mistaken, China welcomes the Americans to play a positive role in East Asia but not to "share the Asia-Pacific sky" with them. The "Asia-Pacific sky" belongs to only those countries that are under it. It, however, would welcome the US to increase its investment in the region provided it does so with the good intentions of building a mutually beneficial situation - not a Cold War-like atmosphere in which farce becomes the order of the day.

Ten years ago, another American professor, Joseph Nye, said do not treat China as an enemy because if you do so, you will get an enemy. Perhaps one more sentence could be added to Nye's statement: Only when China and the US treat each other as true cooperative partners, or at least potential partners, will they avoid making enemies out of each other.

Nye's famous statement was for George W. Bush when he first became the president of America. In the beginning, Bush didn't listen to him but he had to change his stance later.

Whether US President Barack Obama will listen to the voice of reason is still not known. But the release of the so-called China military report by the US recently is not a departure from America's Cold War mentality and hegemony.

There are differences between China and the US, but that does not mean they are destined to be enemies.

The author is executive director of the Strategy Research Center of China International Studies Research Fund.

(China Daily 09/07/2010 page9)