David Ignatius: A U.S.-China ‘reset’?

The Washington Post

By David Ignatius Opinion writer December 16 at 7:11 PM

This year began with some Chinese and American foreign-policy analysts looking back a century to World War I and wondering if confrontation was inevitable between a rising power and a dominant one. But now there has been progress on climate, trade and security issues and what seems a modest “reset” of the Sino-American relationship.

Future disagreements between the United States and China are inevitable. But the surprise of a high-level dialogue here last weekend was the interest by both sides in exploring what the Chinese like to call “win-win” cooperation.

“I don’t believe there will be a military confrontation between the two countries,” insisted one of China’s top American experts, who not long ago was warning about strains in the relationship. Recent disputes over maritime boundaries in the East and South China seas are “not particularly dangerous,” said another prominent Chinese scholar.

The positive tone was partly an afterglow of the successful summit meeting here last month between President Xi Jinping and President Obama, which produced agreements to reduce carbon emissions, expand military confidence-building measures and negotiate a bilateral investment treaty. Xi is an unusually confident leader. He has dropped China’s usual talk about being too poor and weak to partner with the United States — and speaks instead of forging a “community of common destiny.”

The Chinese are nothing if not pragmatic about their interests, and the less confrontational stance may reflect Beijing’s recognition that China is a little weaker economically and America a bit stronger than might have been predicted a year ago. The American century isn’t over yet, as Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor who helped organize the conference, points out in a forthcoming book.

Chinese experts noted that the U.S. economy has rebounded from the 2008 crash more strongly than some analysts here had expected, while China’s own growth is slowing after several decades of rocket-ship acceleration. Russia is weak and volatile and not a reliable partner for Beijing. And China’s regional ambitions have been complicated by its aggressive claims of maritime rights that frightened Japan, the Philippines and other neighbors, pushing them toward the United States. All these factors argue for greater cooperation with Washington.

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