Opinion | How new-found trust between the Vatican and Beijing should inspire Chinese and US trade negotiators

The Vatican’s chief negotiator in China has spoken of how building trust between the two sides involves avoiding doctrinal positions in favour of solving practical problems. China and the US might take a leaf out of the cardinal’s book

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Published: 1:00am, 21 May 2019Updated: 2:26am, 21 May 2019

Blessed are the peacemakers, as the Bible says. Trust takes a long time to build. Worse, in clumsy hands, it can vanish before you know it. Notice how the goodwill between Beijing and Washington seems to be bottoming out almost faster than you can say “the spirit of Mar-a-Lago and the Diaoyutai State Guest House”.

Yet, at this same dolorous moment in our fraught contemporary history, Beijing and the Vatican are mending their heretofore wary and volatile relationship by working out a “provisional” agreement on the appointment of Catholic bishops. The deal looks to have been simply a matter, one might say, of reworking Matthew 22:21: Caesar (Beijing) is to be rendered what is due to the state, without cutting out what is due to God, or in this case, the Vatican.

What’s more, in this process, the representatives of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Pope Francis, leader of the Catholic Church, appear to have brewed a cup or two of utilitarian trust for one another. This was evident in an interview with Rome’s lead negotiator by the Italian sinologist Francesco Sisci.

The signing of the provisional agreement “constitutes the point of arrival of a long journey, but it is above all a starting point”, said Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin. He added that “there are elements which demonstrate an increased trust between the two sides” and that “we have to journey together, because only in this way will we be able to heal the wounds and misunderstandings of the past in order to show the world that even starting from positions that are far apart, we can reach fruitful agreements.”

Pope Francis, followed by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, arrives in Seoul, South Korea, in August 2014. In a recent interview, Parolin spoke of “the long journey” towards a rapprochement between the church and China. Photo: AP

In diplomacy, the playing field must be drained of opposing dogma: moral bifurcation only serves to keep both sides’ feet planted on the ground they started with, vacating the possibility of movement and nullifying the modification of differences.