Cui: China ready to improve US relations before election

As US Democratic and Republican candidates make final dashes for the presidency, Beijing's top envoy in Washington said China would not "waste time" waiting for the outcome of the election but stands ready to work with the current administration to resolve problems straining bilateral relations.

"Maybe some people believe that China is just waiting for the result of the US presidential election in November. Let me make it very clear here: We are not waiting for anything, and we are never willing to waste time in waiting," Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai said.

The remarks, made during a webinar with a score of US scholars and former US government officials at the Brookings Institution a week ago, were released by the Chinese embassy on Wednesday.

Fewer than 80 days before the election, the Democrats have nominated former vice-president Joe Biden to attempt to deny President Donald Trump another four years in the White House.

There have been conflicting reports about which candidate China may support, though Beijing has repeatedly said it has no interest in other nations' domestic affairs.

Presidential campaigns also have tied bilateral relations to the election, with each side attempting to position itself as tougher on China than its rival.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has claimed that China is waiting until the November election for further action on the trade talks.

Navarro told reporters Wednesday that China is now "betting, putting their bet behind Joe Biden, and they're going to wait until after the election for any future negotiations; that's very clear that's what their strategy is".

Cui noted that American domestic dynamics are "well beyond what we can predict or influence".

"We have no intention or interest to get involved," Cui said. "We are ready to work with the current administration to search for solutions to existing problems anytime, anywhere, even today or tomorrow."

Tensions between the two countries have run high this year, with some US hawks promoting an alternative view of bilateral relations — that engagement was a mistake; and they are obsessed with great-power competition and strategic rivalry.

Students from the Alice Deal Middle School pose for a group photograph with a visiting delegation from Beijing on Thursday in Washington. ZHAO HUANXIN/CHINA DAILY

"Alarmingly, there are attempts now to negate what has been built up so painstakingly by generations of Chinese and Americans over the decades and to deliberately push our two countries into conflict and confrontation," Cui said.

"I hope people will not try to negate all this and let the relationship go down a very dangerous path," he added.

The Chinese ambassador said none of the major international crises in the 21st century — the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, the global financial crisis of 2008, and the current COVID-19 pandemic — could be resolved with the toolbox of great-power competition, as they are all of a strategic nature.

"It is natural for major countries to have differences and even competition, but they do not justify confrontation," Cui said. "Stigmatization will not make anybody great. Ideological crusades will not solve any problem in today's world and are doomed to fail."

He warned that it is "nothing but wishful thinking" to believe that stoking confrontation could slow down and contain China's development and even bring about a regime change, as history has proved repeatedly that external pressure will only make China stronger and lead to greater unity of its people.

For those who like the term "Cold War" and those bolstered by their victory in the Cold War, Cui cautioned that they should not forget the price the world paid for it over four decades.

In particular, he pointed out that the United States and other countries paid bitter costs in the two hot wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, fought during the Cold War.

"If the negative trend of China-US relations is allowed to continue, China might have to face more difficulties and challenges. But the initiators of the so-called ‘New Cold War' must weigh the costs they have to pay and the consequences for the world," he said. "For whom the bell tolls, there will be a day of reckoning."

Cui said the US has to make a "fundamental choice" — whether getting ready to work with China and other countries to ensure the international order and global system meets the needs of the entire world — or instead remain obsessed with a zero-sum game and major-power competition and let the situation spiral out of control and fall into the "Thucydides Trap".

"I just hope that they will free themselves from the panic and paranoid, which is costing them common sense in such a shocking way," Cui said.

Instead, people from all walks of life in China and the US should stay guarded against "vicious" attempts to push the bilateral relationship to confrontation and conflict, resist any resurgence of McCarthyism, and expand two-way exchanges and cooperation to get the China-US relationship back on the right track, he concluded.