Beijing's top envoy in Washington said that China is willing to work with the administration of US President Donald Trump for a more stable and robust relationship.
China's Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview on Saturday that it is up to the US to decide if it is ready to live peacefully with a country different from itself.
"President Trump is president of the United States elected by the American people. So we are ready to work with him and his administration to build a more stable and stronger relationship between our two great countries," Cui said when he was asked if Trump is a friend or an adversary of China.
We really have to base our policies on a good perception of the common interests, on growing global challenges and how the international community would expect us to do, and not allow suspicion, fear, or even hatred to hijack our foreign policy.
Cui Tiankai, China's ambassador to the US
The ambassador also said that a country should not allow its foreign policy to be hijacked by suspicion, fear or hatred.
Asked to comment on claims by some in the West that China has become more assertive, expansionist and aggressive in recent years, which was followed by a different American response than the previous approach over many decades, Cui said China has the legitimate right to build a modernized, strong and prosperous country, like every other country in the world.
"I think that the fundamental question for the United States is very simple," the ambassador said. "Is the United States ready or willing to live with another country with a very different culture, a very different political and economic system... in peace and cooperate on so many and still growing global challenges?
"I think this is a real choice. This is a fundamental choice people have to make," Cui added.
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The interview followed weeks of escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing that have made headlines in major US media sources.
The Wall Street Journal, for example, reported on Thursday, "The Trump administration is intensifying US pressure on China, piling on visa bans, sanctions and other restrictions that are battering already unsettled ties between the world's two largest economies."
A story in The New York Times on July 14 carried the headline "Caught in 'Ideological Spiral,' US and China Drift Toward Cold War".
Instead of ramping up confrontations, senior Chinese diplomats have recently focused more on how to steer onto the right track of China-US relations, which are faced with the most severe challenge since the two countries established diplomatic ties in 1979.
Last month, China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi met with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Hawaii to discuss sensitive factors in bilateral ties. Yang said cooperation was the only correct choice for China and the US, as both sides benefit from cooperation and suffer from confrontation, according to China's Foreign Ministry.
On July 7, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China is still willing to grow China-US relations with "goodwill and sincerity". Wang suggested drawing lists to identify areas where the two countries can cooperate, disputes that could be resolved and ones that cannot.
Ambassador Cui said in Saturday's interview that while the US and Chinese leaders and governments would represent the interests of their own countries, the key is to identify the growing common interests, areas where the two countries can actively work together for their peoples and for the international community.
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"At the same time, we have to do a good job in managing any possible differences between us in a constructive way. That's been our approach all along," Cui said.
The ambassador expressed his confidence in the goodwill of the American people and said China has the same kind of goodwill toward Americans.
He said that great powers bear heavy responsibilities not only for themselves but also for the world.
"We really have to base our policies on a good perception of the common interests, on growing global challenges and how the international community would expect us to do, and not allow suspicion, fear, or even hatred to hijack our foreign policy," the ambassador said.
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Fighting COVID-19
When asked about China's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cui said China had reported to the World Health Organization about the cases of what people at the time called "pneumonia with unknown cause" at the very early stage of the pandemic.
Cui said the Chinese CDC and the US CDC had their first communication about this new virus on Jan 4, which he described as "an ongoing process to strengthen global cooperation, to build up our knowledge, to coordinate responses of various countries".
Cui also mentioned the World Health Assembly held in May, in which China together with more than 140 other countries, co-sponsored a resolution on strengthening global cooperation in response to the pandemic. Cui said while some other country may already consider withdrawing from the WHO, China has strengthened its support for it.
"We are working with the WHO for some scientific cooperation, scientific and technical work that can be done together between China and the WHO and the scientists of other countries, to trace the origin of the virus, to learn more about its transmission, and how to contain it, how to treat people, how to cure people, how to save lives, how to develop a vaccine," Cui said.
Pan Mengqi in Beijing contributed to this story.
