A bridge over troubled waters
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To some extent and in some sectors such mechanisms already exist such as the Joint Commission on Commerce & Trade (JCCT), the new US-China investment forum, and about 60 other bilateral dialogue mechanisms. But apart from the JCCT, the other mechanisms are episodic and do not function throughout the year as real intergovernmental working groups could.
Fifth, while dialogue is the principal goal of the S&ED, we could still ask: What actual agreements emerged and how much progress was made at this year's meeting? We cannot immediately know all the progress made, because actions prompted by the S&ED will be taken subsequently (particularly by China) and Beijing does not wish to tie them directly to discussions with the US. This is the likely case with the yuan revaluation issue.
What emerged from the S&ED were a new Joint Statement on Energy Security Cooperation and a series of MoUs on people-to-people and students' exchanges. The US officials reiterated their intent to send 100,000 American students to study in China over the next four years, while the Chinese side graciously committed itself to a new initiative of offering scholarships to 10,000 of those students.
The "strategic track" of the S&ED produced a 26-point document of "outcomes". Most of these conclusions relate to energy and environmental sectors. But beyond this area, the document is hardly impressive. Disparate and minor issues such as fighting corruption, illegal logging and building a Chinese garden in the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. have been included on the list. The two sides simply said that dialogues would continue on security, arms control, non-proliferation, regional and international issues, counter-terrorism and human rights.
But notably absent, by the two sides' own omission, were the big strategic issues of the day: rebuilding the global institutional order, the Asian security architecture, bilateral military-military exchange, the Korean Peninsula and Iranian nuclear issues and the role of China and the US in regional affairs, the situations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the European sovereign debt crisis, the UN's Millennium Development Goals and international development assistance, the Tibet and Taiwan issues, and, above all, building mutual strategic trust between Beijing and Washington and their armed forces.
Instead of illegal logging, gardens and fighting corruption, these are the issues that the "strategic track" of dialogue should be discussing. Perhaps crucial international strategic issues were discussed, but the document released after the S&ED does not indicate it. This suggests that, if the issues were discussed, the two sides disagreed over them. Thus, establishing genuine mutual strategic trust remains the weak leg of Sino-American relationship. This is precisely the reason why the two countries should hold more intensive - lower-level - dialogues and organize more exchanges on these issues.
The second S&ED, thus, can be considered a relative success. The process itself was a full success, the announced outcomes less so. But without such in-depth engagements, the world's most important bilateral relationship cannot advance in cooperation. Differences are to be expected, but only through such intensive dialogue can they be narrowed and addressed mutually. And they have to be, for almost every country in the world has a stake in the success of the S&ED process.
The author is a senior Fulbright research scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of World Economics and Politics.
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