China and the United States hold their fifth round of Strategic Economic Dialogues (SED) in Beijing on Thursday and Friday, December 4-5, and its is the final round of SED during the last days of the tenure of Bush administration. Compared with concrete contents of SED, people seem to care more about whether the next U.S. administration will inherit and continue this dialogue mechanism.
There are indeed disputes in the U.S. on whether the SED mechanism can succeed in overstepping or outstripping the sustainable development of Bush administration. But there is no problem on the part of China. According to the understanding of the Chinese side, the SED mechanism has originally intended to gear to the strategic and overall relations between China and the U.S. instead of sticking fast to details in specific realms.
The fundamental objective of the SED is to hinge on Sino-U.S. economic relations for promoting their strategic ties, and to handle their economic ties from the strategic height. So in such circumstances, China hopes even more to give scope to the unique, distinctive role of this mechanism.
First all, the global financial, economic situation has made SED all the more crucial and essential on the one hand. As the U.S. financial crisis ignited by the Wall Street financial storm sustains and spreads worldwide, not only substantial economies slowdown, but world economy has also been implicated. In this respect, how the U.S. rescue package would work and how American economy would develop will have a bearing on the future of global economy.
On the other hand, people will naturally focus their eyes on China, another engine for the world economic development, as it now has immense reserves of foreign currency, and its economic conditions will affect the global economic situation. More important, provided a major crisis occurs in the country, it would severely undermine people's confidence once again. Against this backdrop, if the two sides have an extensive, in-depth exchange of views and discuss plans to stabilize their economies, it will conform to the interests of both nations but is also vital and conducive to the interests of all countries on earth.
Secondly, the world today has a global dialogue mechanism, which does not suffice to cope with the current crisis, whereas SED serves as an important replenishment. Practice has shown that the significance of G8 discounts as the U.S.-Russian relations are still deadlocked and Europe and the U.S. vie to lead the new global financial setup today. The just concluded G20 summit is merely a forum for member countries to air their views and promote dialogue between advanced and emerging countries on key issues regarding economic growth and stability of the global financial market. Despite some consensuses reached at the summit, the member countries failed to achieve instant outcome with their bailout efforts. The SED, however, is closely related to its theme, "hitting the nail on the head" and, therefore, it strives to seek actual effect. So the SED is able to play a beneficial supplementary role for G8, G20 and other existing mechanisms.
Thirdly, SED proceeds from a strategic and long-term perspective of Sino-U.S. relations. The year 2009 marks the 30th anniversary of the forging of Sino-U.S. diplomatic ties. Great achievements have been scored and historic topics also left behind in the past three decades. The strategic economic dialogue (SED) and bilateral strategic dialogue have become the effective, viable channels over the past few years as well as a major hallmark for the stable growth of bilateral relations.
Finally, whether or not the SED mechanism will last has become a vital weathervane to observe the policy of the new Obama government toward China. As pragmatic and sophisticated statesmen, Barack Obama and his team of Asian diplomacy should know well what a good and stable Sino-U.S. relations means to the two great nations and how to go on spurring bilateral relation in a constructive direction. The Obama team is said to affirm the unique role of SED with a political resolve to keep it. What can be expected or envisioned is that the guidelines of SED will be retained and more importance will be attached to its important significance. After all, the matter of urgency for Obama at present is an all-out push for economic development while Sino-U.S. cooperation is an indispensable link in this endeavor of his administration.
By People's Daily Online and its author is Yuan Peng, a researcher and concurrently deputy director of the office of American Studies under the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations
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