Expert stresses mutual trust in Sino-US ties

Shared responsibility

Roach said that after dealing with the easy issues, the two sides can then proceed to work together on tougher global issues for which they have shared responsibility, such as climate change, global health and cybersecurity.

"But if they remain conflicted, as they are now, and the conflict gets worse, then their ability to tackle these enormous and important global issues will be severely constrained."

His second proposal is to move away from the bilateral zero-sum trade framework that features tariffs, to end that, and focus more on pro-growth, market-opening initiatives, such as a bilateral investment treaty that focuses on reducing investment barriers.

"So that is a much more powerful and positive-sum approach than the zero-sum, bilateral trade deficit fixation that has failed."

In the third part of his strategy for resolving conflict, Roach proposes a new approach to engage China, different from the part-time approach that provides support to summits or the once or twice a year strategic and economic dialogue.

"My strong view is that we need full-time engagement between senior Chinese and American professionals and diplomats, dealing 24/7, around the clock with all aspects of the relationship," he said of his proposal of establishing a US-China secretariat as a new architecture of engagement.

Roach said that the feasibility of the fresh approach is very low, given the political environment, but he would push hard for it because the world's most important bilateral relationship is in a danger zone.