Engagement and cooperation with China remain crucial for U.S. vital interests, American experts have said.
"Today, as (U.S. President Joe) Biden and his team develop a new strategy to meet the defining international challenge of this generation, many are urging them to give up on engagement altogether. That would be a mistake," said an article co-authored by Graham Allison, a professor and the founding dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, and Fred Hu, founder and chair of Primavera Capital Group.
"Instead, the administration should heed the central lesson of five decades of U.S. policy toward China: it works best when focusing realistically on geopolitical objectives essential to protect American interests, and worst when attempting to engage in political engineering to promote American values," said the article titled An Unsentimental China Policy and recently published by Foreign Affairs.
In the article, the authors put forward several "instructive" lessons drawn from the U.S. record of dealing with China for the Biden administration.
"First, when pursuing geopolitical objectives, engagement has succeeded more often than failed," they said. "Second, those who advocate regime change in China are as misguided as those who pushed wars in the Middle East in pursuit of the same objective."
"The third lesson for Biden is that policies of openness and integration have been engines of economic growth for the world, and they will remain essential for a successful future," the authors stressed.
"As Washington contends with the current contest with Beijing, it is worth recalling words Kissinger said in a 1976 speech about dealing with the last great challenge: 'We know what we must do. We also know what we can do. It only remains to do it,'" said the article.
None of the major global issues including combating climate change, containing future pandemics, preventing nuclear proliferation, fighting terrorism, managing financial crises can be done without China's cooperation, it said.
China's decades of economic growth has resulted in the "most dramatic reduction in poverty of any large nation in history," said the article.
"When it comes to expanding citizens' economic rights, it has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams," it said.
"Today, China has become an active member of all the major international organizations. Of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, it contributes the most troops, and the second-most amount of money, to UN peacekeeping efforts," it said.
