Avery Goldstein (second left), Director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania, shares his views during a panel discussion on international relations at the Penn Wharton China Summit in Philadelphia, the U.S., on April 20 (COURTESY PHOTO)

As China and the United States work toward a trade deal, the question remains whether it will put an end to the underlying tensions between the world's largest economies. Avery Goldstein, Director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania, shared his views on current China-U.S. relations and the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative in an exclusive interview with Beijing Review reporter Zhao Wei on the sidelines of the Penn Wharton China Summit 2019 in Philadelphia on April 20. Edited excerpts of the interview follow:

Beijing Review: In early April, U.S. President Donald Trump expressed optimism that China and the U.S. could reach a "great deal" soon. How "great" do you think it will be for the future development of China-U.S. relations? Do you think it will help resolve the tensions between the two countries?

Avery Goldstein: I think it will reduce the tensions. I think it may be a good deal. As long as it's not a bad deal, it will be better than no deal. But this is not going to fundamentally resolve the reasons why there's economic conflict between the two countries on a number of issues that have to do with trade, subsidies, technology sharing openness and the number of investments in each other's countries. You would assume that a deal is going to provide some guidelines, and then each side will assess whether the other side is living up to the terms of the deal well enough to want to continue to cooperate. But that's an open question. We don't know the terms yet.

What do you think is the main source of competition between the two countries?

The main source of competition is really the fact that China is growing richer and more powerful. No matter what China does, it will worry the United States because the United States has led the world at least since 1990, and it didn't really have to think about taking into account what other people wanted because it was the only great power in the international system. Even during the Cold War, the Soviet Union was never as economically significant as China is today in the world.

Another U.S. concern is that although China today is not as militarily powerful as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War, because China's economy is so strong and its technology improving, if China wanted to improve its military power, it has the potential to become a much more formidable competitor to the United States than the Soviet Union ever was. The Soviet military was big and dangerous, but technologically it was behind the United States because of the weaknesses in the Soviet economy. In China's case, it looks as though its economic and technological modernization is producing a country that will be, within a few decades, comparable to the United States.

Do you think that the two countries can work out a long-term mechanism to guide this competition?

I think there is not going to be one single way to do it. It is basically going to be both sides agreeing that it is going to require constant management and that there are going to be ups and downs. The idea is to prevent the relationship from spinning out of control when it goes downhill or worse. Let's realize that things are bad now, but our goal is to prevent them from getting worse, to try to figure out ways to reduce the conflicts. A lot of this has to do with communication between the two sides. But to be honest, it's not true that the difficulties are simply a result of a lack of communication or trust, or misunderstandings. Some of these issues are genuine conflicts of interests.

In the future, in which areas can the two countries carry out more cooperation?

I think areas that don't touch on fundamental national or security interests are areas for cooperation, such as global public health problems like the Ebola virus in Africa; the spread of infectious diseases like the bird flu; climate change problems which require not only global leadership, but also global cooperation; the fight against international crime, drug trafficking, human trafficking and transnational terrorism.

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Belt and Road Initiative were both proposed by China in 2013, raising some different voices in the U.S. What do you think of these opinions?

The AIIB is a multilateral lending institution proposed and led by China. The decision not to join and to tell everyone else not to join is one of the great foreign policy mistakes of the Obama administration. Others joined anyway. In fact, the AIIB is something the United States simply should welcome.

As a multilateral lending institution led by Jin Liqun, the AIIB has made it clear that it is going to be just like any other multilateral lending institutions, such as the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, and that it is going to pay attention to environmental standards and good governance and all those things.

The Belt and Road Initiative is different. It's China proposing that it's going to carry it out, make the loans and target the investments.

Sri Lanka is the one case that people always point to. They talk about Hambantota Port, which was troubling. I think it has been misreported by some Western media outlets. They make it sound like Hambantota is now a colony of China. It's not a colony, it's not a naval base, but it is a port that's operated by China Merchants Port Holdings.

The reaction from the outside world, not just the United States, but Europe as well, has been: If China doesn't do a good job of implementing the Belt and Road Initiative, then the outcome may be that China will begin to take control of ports and other assets in countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, and maybe Africa and Eastern Europe. That would be something other countries won't like, something the United States would view as a challenge and a threat.

People don't criticize the AIIB, but they do criticize the United States for not joining it or telling the UK not to join. The AIIB has generally gotten a positive evaluation. The Belt and Road Initiative has mostly been criticized by the United States, and my view is that U.S. criticism should not simply be, "This is terrible debt trap diplomacy." U.S. criticism should be: Don't make the mistakes other great powers have made in the past. Don't make the mistake that other lenders have made in the past in the developing world through loans that countries can't repay. Do a better job.

Copyedited by Rebeca Toledo

Comments to zhaowei@bjreview.com