Xi-Obama summit opens new chapter in China-US relations

Although Chinese President Xi Jinping returned home Sunday, political pundits across the world are still trying to decipher the significance of his unprecedented informal summit with U.S. President Barack Obama over the weekend. During the two-day summit, staged in the picturesque Sunnylands estate in California, the two leaders spent more than eight hours together, talking with phenomenal depth and breadth about bilateral, regional and global issues of common concern. The get-together, unparalleled in China-U.S. interaction, has produced a rich harvest of fruits, with the most striking one being the joint commitment to building the bilateral relationship into a new type of great power relations based on mutual respect and win-win cooperation. The world has suffered too much pain in the seemingly doomed confrontations and wars between existing and emerging powers. It is high time that the vicious cycle should be put to an end. Thus Beijing and Washington's shared vision of a new model of great power relations, which will serve as a lighthouse to guide the development of bilateral relations, accords with the interests of not only the two countries themselves but the world at large. Confidence is no longer a barrier. Given the rapid pace of economic globalization and the growing need for global stakeholders to pull together, China and the United States should and can avert the so-called tragedy of great power politics and blaze a new path in international relations. After years of cooperation, the Chinese and U.S. national interests have become increasingly interlocked, and a strong interdependence has taken root between the pair, which are the largest two economies in the world. And respectively as the world's largest developing and developed country, China and the United States have too much to gain from cooperation to opt for confrontation. Steering bilateral cooperation forward is a firm political will the two sides have fostered over decades of interaction. Undergirding it are a multi-tier network of dialogue and consultation mechanisms between them and a solid base of public support in both countries. The trends of the times, such as political multipolarization and economic globalization, have also provided a favorable environment for the two countries to realize their vision of a new model of great power relations. It is undeniable that gaps, differences and disputes still exist between China and the United States, making the trans-Pacific relationship highly complicated. However, over the past more than 40 years, the two countries have managed to steer their relations steadily forward. Should history be any indication, the trans-Pacific relationship will forge ahead along the course Xi and Obama have just charted and cast a long-running positive influence upon the peace and development of the whole world.