From the point of view of the United States, I work with you profitably, you are a friend, a partner. However, whether friends or not, people always compete with each other; people live in peace ****, competition, friction is always inevitable, but can also use diplomacy to set things right and avoid conflict. This is the basic attitude of the United States towards any country, including China. China has never at any time wanted to threaten the United States, that is obvious; the United States has never wanted to expel China from the earth, and anyone who tries to do so will be considered an idiot by the Americans.
Non-synchronous Sino-U.S. political and economic relations
That is to say, the ups and downs of Sino-U.S. political relations are not synchronized with, or even correlated with, the continuing stable and expanding Sino-U.S. economic relations. China-U.S. political relations and China-U.S. economic relations are of course intrinsically linked in many ways, but the changes in the two are not synchronized and may sometimes be reversed.
Changes in Sino-U.S. political relations and economic relations are out of sync and even in reverse. The second is the 11 years after the end of the Cold War. After the end of the Cold War, the degree of political confrontation between China and the United States was much more severe during Clinton's first term than during Clinton's second term, and then China-U.S. relations regressed again after the Bush administration. The immediate cause of the change in Clinton's policy toward China was the US-China military confrontation that occurred in the Taiwan Strait region in 1996. The danger of a military conflict between China and the United States in the Taiwan Strait prompted the Clinton administration to introduce a policy of full engagement with China. Since then, Sino-US relations have continued to improve, and in 1997, the leaders of the United States and China reached a ****consensus to "strive to establish a constructive strategic partnership for the 21st century". After George W. Bush came to power in 2000, the bilateral relationship regressed again by treating China as a "strategic competitor" to be guarded against. However, in the 11 years since the end of the Cold War, this low-high-low curve in Sino-U.S. political relations is quite different from the trend in Sino-U.S. economic relations. If we compare the trade volume, we find that the trade volume has been on an upward trend in all three periods, growing from $11.8 billion in 1990 to $42.8 billion in 1996, and thereafter from 1996 to $74.4 billion in 2000, and that China-U.S. trade volume will probably grow to $90 billion in 2002 after the Bush administration. If we compare the average annual growth rate of trade volume during these three periods, it is about 24%, 14.8% and 10%, which is all the way down. Two different methods of comparison show that changes in Sino-U.S. political relations over these 11 years have not correlated with changes in economic relations.
China-US political relations and economic relations have different bases of ****same interests. The fundamental reason why the development process of Sino-US political relations and economic relations is not synchronized or even lacks correlation is that the interests of Sino-US political relations and economic relations are based on different bases. The basis of Sino-US political relations is the strategic interests of the two countries. Whether the strategic interests of the two countries are consistent or not determines whether the political relationship between the two countries is a partner or a rival, while the degree of consistency or conflict between the strategic interests of the two countries determines the degree of good or bad bilateral political relations.
For example, in the 1980s, China and the United States had a great ****similar strategic interest in ****similarity in curbing the military threat of the former Soviet Union, so China and the United States maintained a substantial strategic partnership. 1988 the United States and the Soviet Union ratified the INF agreement, and Reagan declared the end of the Cold War, and no longer regarded the Soviet Union as an "evil empire". ". With the disappearance of ****same strategic interests, the Sino-US strategic partnership therefore could not be maintained. Because of the absence of the strategic threat of ****tong, therefore, after the Cold War, every time the political relationship between China and the United States improved, it could not go beyond the nature of non-enemy and non-friend. Even though the 9.11 incident has found the ****same security threat for China and the United States, since this security threat is not yet at the level of a strategic threat and its strategic importance cannot be compared with that of the Soviet threat during the Cold War, the current Sino-US strategic relationship has still not completely escaped from the nature of non-enemy and non-friend.
The basis of Sino-American economic relations is the economic interests between China and the United States. Whether the economic interests are complementary or not determines whether the economic relations between the two countries are cooperative or competitive, while the degree of complementarity and competitiveness determines the intensity of bilateral economic cooperation and competition. China is a developing country and the U.S. is a developed country, and there is a large gap between the overall economic levels of the two countries, so there is little competitive conflict between the economic interests of the two countries. China needs U.S. investment, technology and advanced equipment, financial services, and markets for daily necessities and household appliances that the United States no longer produces. The United States needs to expand its share of investment in China, export high-tech products and services to China, and sell U.S. financial products to China. Therefore, the economic interests of China and the United States are objectively complementary. Since China's reform and opening-up policy was implemented in 1978, China's economy has maintained a strong growth momentum, and China's need for U.S. capital, technology, and markets has continued to grow, while at the same time China has provided the U.S. with a larger export and investment market. Therefore, although the political relationship between China and the United States changed from an ally to a non-enemy to a friend in 1989, the economic relationship between China and the United States could move forward steadily.