Opinion / Editorials

Cooperation to overcome rift

(China Daily) Updated: 2014-05-29 08:02

The world's biggest and second-biggest economies have reached a consensus to build a new type of major-country relationship, in which cooperation and the pursuit of positive results should become the mainstream despite their differences.

So the row between China and the United States over cyber security should not become a rift that undermines cooperation between the two countries, says a Xinhua News Agency article.

The US needs China's support to stabilize the situation on the Korean Peninsula, tackle climate change and join the fight against global terrorism. Moreover, China remains a promising market for American entrepreneurs.

For China, the US is more than an important trading partner, it is also a staunch fighter against terrorism. The US role in efforts to eliminate terrorism has become especially important for China given the deadly terrorist attacks in the past few months.

At this point, more trust should be built with regards to information sharing and cyber security to fight the two countries' common enemy, instead of sowing the seeds of distrust.

Also, if both sides can seek more common ground and reach more consensus on a number of other issues, Sino-US relations could become a model of peaceful co-existence between a superpower and a peacefully rising country - an example that will prove valuable for country-to-country relations in history.

However, although China has showed its willingness to act constructively, the US has been skeptical about China's intentions and made untrue accusations against China in a number of areas.

The US has filed ungrounded cyber theft charges against five Chinese military officers, despite its own cyber espionage for commercial advantage. It also blames Beijing's ethnic policies and hinted at religious repression as the reason for the terrorist attacks on innocent civilians in China.

Meanwhile, it claims it takes neither positions nor sides on the issue of China's territorial sovereignty, yet its "rebalancing to Asia" policy has actually made it a "country behind the curtain" over a number of disputes in the South and East China seas.

It is worth noting that a stable and peaceful China and peace and stability in Asia accord with the interests of the US.

Washington should refrain from taking further wrongful steps against China and instead seek to build greater trust in more areas.

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