US, China can compete and cooperate to build trust, American diplomat says

Nations could work together in areas like climate change and Afghanistan, according to David Meale, chargé d’affaires of the US embassy in Beijing
‘I think of it as a process of improving what’s easy to improve’ before moving on to tackle the most challenging issues, he says

US-China relations

Teddy Ng

Published: 9:00pm, 4 Oct 2021

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A senior American diplomat in Beijing has called for the US and China to look for areas where they can cooperate – like climate change and Afghanistan – as a way to build trust before moving on to more challenging issues.

David Meale, chargé d’affaires of the US embassy in Beijing, also said he did not believe Washington and Beijing were treading a fine line between competition and confrontation.

“I don’t think it is walking a fine line, I think of it as a process of improving what is easy to improve, then what is a little more challenging to improve, and then learning from those processes to extend to our most challenging areas,” he told Chinese magazine Caijing in an interview published on Sunday.

His remarks come as the two powers remain locked in confrontation over a wide range of issues, including China’s maritime disputes with its neighbours, Taiwan, trade policies, and human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

But there has been more high-level communication between the two sides in recent months, with US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman meeting senior Chinese diplomats in Tianjin in July, and the countries’ leaders, Xi Jinping and Joe Biden, speaking by phone last month.

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During the call – their first in six months – Xi and Biden discussed managing the competition between the two nations. Beijing last week also confirmed that Xi had called for the US to “properly” resolve the case of Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou during the phone call. Two weeks later, Meng was released from nearly three years under house arrest in Vancouver after admitting wrongdoing – but not guilt – in a case relating to alleged violations of US sanctions on Iran. She had been detained in Canada at the request of the US and the case further inflamed tensions between Beijing and Washington.

US diplomat Meale told Caijing there were “very challenging issues between our countries” but that they could cooperate as well as compete.

“When we talk about competition, we’re talking about making competition healthy – just as when two companies compete against each other, it spurs them to develop better products and offer better services, we see that healthy competition between countries can mean the same thing,” he said. “If you can harvest the cooperation, and make the competition more positive, then you build trust.”

Meale pointed to climate change and Afghanistan as areas where China and the US could work together.

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What is China doing about climate change?

Addressing a concern raised by China during Sherman’s visit in July, Meale said the US had sped up the approval process for Chinese applying for student visas.

Beijing gave two lists of demands and grievances to Sherman, including concerns over Chinese student visas being rejected and a call for the US to drop its request to extradite Meng. It also called for an end to the requirement for Chinese media to register as foreign agents in America.

William Bistransky, consul general at the US embassy in Beijing, told the magazine that US visa policy had not affected interest from young Chinese applying for visas. He said that since May, more than half of the 85,000 US visas issued to Chinese students were for those in STEM disciplines.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Diplomat urges US, China to find areas to cooperate