Peaceful war drives Sino-US relations
Patrick Mendis says China and the US - despite differences in language and culture - strive for the same "Pacific Dream" based on a special relationship bound by trade and commerce
China and America are seemingly polar opposite. As one of oldest and still evolving civilisations, the Confucian union in China is a result of history. The United States was created by a group of enlightened founding visionaries of the late 18th century led by George Washington. Yet, both nations have had experience with European colonialism and engaged in wars with the British. The American Revolution led to the expulsion of Red Coats from colonial America while China had to endure two opium wars with the British.
What's remarkable is that the common language, ethnic bonding, and shared religious influence did not prevent the US declaring war in 1812 against the British Empire. During this time and for more than a century until the first opium war, trade relations flourished between the oldest civilisation and the newest nation on earth.
Similar to the 13 original American colonies that were bound by trade, China and America enjoyed commercial and friendly relations during the trade-for-peace era. The Sino-American experience suggests that trade - not language, ethnicity and religion - binds nations together.
In fact, China and America enjoy a "special relationship" - one that existed long before Winston Churchill claimed to have one between the US and the UK - because Beijing and Washington have never directly declared war on each other.
Throughout China's past, the humiliating European colonialism - including the agonising Japanese atrocities - and internal tribal warfare produced a unique national consciousness in modern China; the unfolding history thus created the Chinese republic led by Mao Zedong . The US, like the People's Republic of China, is a republic, not a democracy, as the founding fathers of America envisioned.
Trade has the supreme power to overcome all differences among people
It is true that the promotion of democracy was embedded in the principles of the founding republic as Thomas Jefferson wanted to transform the new nation into an idealistic Empire of Liberty. At the creation of the League of Nations after the first world war, president Woodrow Wilson famously declared that "the world must be made safe for democracy", a necessary claim to justify his decision to end imperialism.