“I don’t believe there will be a military confrontation between the two countries,” insisted one of China’s top American experts, who not long ago was warning about strains in the relationship. Recent disputes over maritime boundaries in the East and South China seas are “not particularly dangerous,” said another prominent Chinese scholar.
The positive tone was partly an afterglow of the successful summit meeting here last month between President Xi Jinping and President Obama, which produced agreements to reduce carbon emissions, expand military confidence-building measures and negotiate a bilateral investment treaty. Xi is an unusually confident leader. He has dropped China’s usual talk about being too poor and weak to partner with the United States — and speaks instead of forging a “community of common destiny.”
The Chinese are nothing if not pragmatic about their interests, and the less confrontational stance may reflect Beijing’s recognition that China is a little weaker economically and America a bit stronger than might have been predicted a year ago. The American century isn’t over yet, as Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor who helped organize the conference, points out in a forthcoming book.
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