Susan Shirk weighs in on managing the difficult situation in China
Economy looms as China, US celebrate relations
01/06/2009
Emma Graham-Harrison,
Forbes.com
BEIJING, Dec 31 (Reuters) - China and the United States should be kicking off 2009 with a celebration of three decades' hard work building one of the world's most crucial diplomatic relationships.
Instead the superpower and the rising power are fighting their way through an economic crisis that may be the biggest strain yet on the web of ties they have created.
Following a ground-breaking visit by former U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1972, the United States switched diplomatic recognition from democratic Taiwan to Communist China on Jan. 1, 1979, recognising "one China" and marking Beijing's emergence from diplomatic and economic isolation.
It smoothed and accelerated reforms that would transform China from a Cold War backwater into the world's fourth-largest economy at astonishing speed.
"This is a very tough thing to manage because of historical precedents of rising powers and the reactions they provoke from other countries," said Susan Shirk, a professor at the University of California San Diego and former U.S. diplomat.
"Historically, rising powers almost always mean war."
In the search for a relationship that will be the cornerstone of peace, they have weathered an embassy bombing and a spy plane crash, a military crackdown on pro-democracy protests, and more recently, tensions over trade and the value of China's currency.
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