China Overseas Chinese Network, February 22. According to "China Times News Network", 50 years ago, US President Nixon visited China.

Out of their own strategic needs, China and the United States surpassed each other's actual contradictions, achieved a handshake across the Pacific Ocean, and changed the direction of the international situation.

Over the past 50 years, China-US relations have gone through ups and downs and advanced in twists and turns, opening a new chapter in the exchanges between the two countries again and again.

　　The world is changing, and so are China and the United States.

The current complex situation in China-US relations may be far more complicated than what the leaders of China and the US imagined when they shook hands 50 years ago.

After experiencing the "Trump shock", the Biden administration continued to regard China as a "strategic competitor" and proposed that the era of Sino-US contact has ended, and competition has become the main theme of the relationship between the two countries.

　　The Biden administration's recently released Indo-Pacific strategy report clearly reflects the current U.S. approach to China's policy. It inherits the Trump administration's goal of suppressing China's development, and at the same time continues the Obama administration's approach. The rules of U.S. interests shape a strategic environment that is favorable for the U.S. to compete with China.

　　Under the new changes, Sino-US relations are lurking undercurrents, and the challenges facing bilateral relations are increasing.

At this moment, the two countries should look back and draw historical nutrients from the "Nixon chapter" of that year to guide the relationship between the two countries to clear the fog.

　　For the United States, dealing with China policy should be more courageous and imaginative.

From the perspective of later development, Nixon's visit to China promoted the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States and served the strategic needs of the United States during the Cold War.

But at that time, Nixon faced strong domestic political resistance and needed enough political courage to take a step to visit China.

At present, it is the easiest and least laborious policy choice for US politicians to comply with the so-called bipartisan consensus on competition with China, but whether they can once again use strategic thinking to jump out of the shackles of the domestic "consensus" on competition with China and promote Sino-US relations towards a more Healthy and stable development?

　　Nixon's visit to China also shows that China and the United States can let go of conflicts between different cultures, ideologies and development stages at critical moments, and choose to achieve each other in the process of interdependence, mutual benefit and win-win results.

However, the current U.S. government has two misunderstandings about China. One is that differences between China and the U.S., rather than commonalities, determine the trend of the relationship between the two countries.

Both of these views are wrong interpretations of the history of Sino-US relations, and not the correct perspective for the history of Sino-US relations.

　　The history of China-US relations over the past 50 years also tells us that attaching great importance to managing risks and strengthening the awareness of exchanges ensures that the relationship between the two countries can be stable and long-term.

From Nixon's visit to China to the dialogue, communication and major decisions between the two countries in the face of a series of crises, they all reflect the strategic determination of the two sides to stabilize relations.

　　At present, China and the United States are also aware of this. The Chinese side proposes that the two countries should adhere to three principles, namely mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation. The statements of no decoupling, no change in China's system, and no confrontation have been put forward one after another, which is equivalent to seeking a certain degree of "re-assurance" for China at the economic, trade, political and strategic levels.

However, in terms of specific policies, the United States has not taken action.

　　Past history also tells us that the close exchanges in the fields of economy, trade, people-to-people and cultural engagement, and mutual interests are deeply and widely intertwined, which constitute the objective basis for the stability of China-US relations.

From this point of view, China and the United States cannot and will not be decoupled in the fields of economy, trade, and humanities.

Against the backdrop of the raging global COVID-19 epidemic, the fact that Sino-US economic and trade exchanges are still rising against the trend fully illustrates this point.

It is undeniable that the strategic needs to support the closeness of China and the United States during the Cold War have changed, but the mutual dependence between China and the United States is by no means a flash in the pan.

　　The end of Sino-US relations is far from coming, and the direction of the situation will still depend on the policy interaction between the two sides.

It is especially important that the two countries should strengthen their understanding of each other's domestic politics and policies as the boundaries between domestic and international politics are increasingly blurred, so as to provide a healthy endogenous impetus for the development of China-US relations.

　　China respects the diversity of domestic politics and society in the United States, and recognizes that politics, economic development, and ethnic relations between the two parties in the United States are changing, and the uncertainty is far greater than the certainty, but it does not believe that the United States has declined.

The United States should respect China's political system, development path, and policy choices, and correctly understand the significance of China's great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, the new "dual-cycle" economic development idea, the 14th Five-Year Plan, and the 2035 vision.

　　In the regional and global fields, China and the United States should strengthen mutual understanding and promote active cooperation instead of vicious competition.

China has no intention of pushing the United States out of the Asia-Pacific, and welcomes the United States to play an active role in the region, but the United States should not create spheres of influence in the "Indo-Pacific" or even construct a competitive narrative of "us versus them."

In the field of global governance, the common interests of China and the United States far outweigh the differences. The prevention and control of the epidemic and the promotion of world economic recovery should be opportunities for China and the United States to work together and increase strategic mutual trust.

　　What's more, the marked difference from the Nixon era is that peace and development have become the themes of today's era.

Economic globalization has closely linked the world's industrial chains. Countries are reluctant to take sides between China and the United States, and regional countries are also reluctant to be involved in major power competition.

Therefore, the expectations of all parties for China and the United States have already undergone tremendous changes from the Nixon era.

　　Just as Henry Kissinger, who served as the national security adviser in the Nixon administration, said that China and the United States should have the right to insist on their own path choices and pursue development, and achieve "co-evolution". Perhaps this was also what Nixon had in mind when he knocked on China's door 50 years ago. .

(The author is Sun Chenghao, an assistant researcher at the Center for Strategic and Security Studies, Tsinghua University)