By Zhou Wenzhong

On the evening of April 19, Zhou Wenzhong , former Chinese ambassador to the US, suggested in an interview at the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2021 on the China-US relations that it would be better if the US could pay attention to three things in its China policy. First, try to act as a responsible stakeholder ; second, truly return to multilateralism; third, respect China’s core interest s with the Taiwan question being one of them.

“I would like to take this opportunity to advise my American friends not to tie the China-US relations with a shift of dominance”, said Zhou Wenzhong, who solemnly stated that China does not and will never mean to dominate the world. It’s misleading to regard the bilateral relations as a transfer of dominance. What’s worse, it is easy to lead to conflict if misleading recurs.

Zhou pointed out that there is a good opportunity for promoting vaccine cooperation between China and the US. Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi once said that in the first half of fight against COVID-19, various countries worldwide had been engaged with pandemic prevention and control, while vaccine cooperation could be the focus in the second half. “Could China and the US carry out vaccine cooperation instead of engaging in vaccine nationalism ? I sincerely hope the US could think about it”, he expressed.

Regarding the US policy toward China, Zhou believed that the US needs to weigh three things right now. First, the former US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick once urged China to “become a responsible global stakeholder ”, but now the US might be expected to be a responsible stakeholder by China; second, the Biden administration is deeply expected to truly return to multilateralism; and third, in China-US relations, China’s core interests, including those concerning the Taiwan question, should be respected, as it is China’s red line that cannot be crossed. “I sincerely hope that the Biden administration could take a cautious look at the problems faced by the previous administrations of the US”, added Mr. Zhou.

Zhou reminded that China and the US should try to avoid some explosive issues, as those concerning the Taiwan question.

The normalization of relations between China and the US was achieved under the premise that “the US agrees to cut all diplomatic relations with Taiwan and withdraw its troops from Taiwan.” Since then, China has always expected that the US will seriously handle the Taiwan question in accordance with the principles of the three US-China joint communiqués .

Regrettably, the US later passed a so-called Taiwan Relations Act following the three communiqués, and a considerable number of other bills related to Taiwan in recent years, according to which the US arms sales to Taiwan probably exceeded nearly 20 billion dollars in the Trump era , and may reach up to more than 5 billion dollars as scheduled this year. In addition, the reported transits of US warships through the Taiwan Strait are on the rise.

Whether the US could properly handle issues relating to the Taiwan region is concerned with the future of the China-US relationship, which deserves a second thought of the US side.

Editor’s note: This article is originally published on crntt.com, and is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.