As they contemplate this turning point, China’s leaders should be aware of how malleable US foreign policy currently is. Although they are accustomed to experiencing the US as a dominant, often censuring “great power,” the reality now is that the US is beginning not only a new presidential administration, but a whole chapter in its history. And, as former Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) famously noted of China’s reforms in the 1980s: “We are feeling our way across the river over the stones.”
It is not that former US president George W. Bush’s administration left Sino-US relations in such bad repair, but that the possibilities for a substantial change for the better have never been greater. Clinton’s openness to new approaches and her early trip to Beijing provides an incomparable opportunity for Chinese leaders to help make the fight against global climate change — which is perhaps the most important challenge to confront the world in our time — a common odyssey.
Orville Schell is director of the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations and a coauthor of the recent report Road-map on US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate Change, issued by the Asia Society and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
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