Sino-US strategic dialogue faces unprecedented test

After months of tension caused by cyber security and maritime disputes, an annual meeting between senior Chinese and US officials, which starts Wednesday in Beijing, is hoped to put the brake on a downward spiral in Sino-US relations.

The sixth China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED), which aims to address problems between the world's two largest economies, will be held until Thursday.

Among the issues the two sides are expected to discuss are the ongoing tensions in the South China Sea, denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the valuation of the Chinese yuan, and an ongoing deadlock in negotiations over updates to a 16 year-old World Trade Organization Information Technology Agreement.

Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi and US Secretary of State John Kerry will co-chair the strategic track of the dialogue, while China's Vice Premier Wang Yang and US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew will jointly head the economic track.

This year's S&ED comes at a critical time, as the Washington Post noted that "the US-China relationship is facing its stiffest test since then US president Richard Nixon traveled to Mao Zedong's China in 1972."

Washington has sided with Tokyo, which is locked in a territorial dispute with Beijing in the East China Sea, by sending fighter jets to an Air Defense Identification Zone set up by China and voicing explicit support for Japan during Obama's East Asia visit.

In May, the US indictment of five Chinese military officers over so-called cyber espionage further irked China, which halted a China-US cyber security working group due to meet under the framework of the S&ED.

Even before the S&ED formally starts, the two sides have already traded blame.

On Monday, China's Assistant Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang told a press briefing that the US "has made some wrong remarks and acts on maritime issues and cyber issues, bringing negative impact on bilateral relations."

Zheng also dismissed the charges against the five Chinese officers as "intentionally fabricated by the US."

A US official, who briefed reporters en route to Beijing, said Tuesday China's claim to the South China Sea is "problematic," and the tensions are "very relevant to the United States as a Pacific power," reported AFP.

Yuan Zheng, a research fellow with the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, partly agreed that bilateral ties are at a low ebb.

"While it seems the threat of a confrontation looms, past experiences in China-US relations proved that whenever a confrontation is about to break out, the two leaderships will pull back from hostility," Yuan told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Da Wei, director of the Institute of American Studies at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, cited the "strategic interdependency" between China and the US, saying that neither country can afford mutual destruction to their economy or security. Some people have said a clash between China and the US is inevitable due to the structural problems between an established power and a rising power.

China holds the view that Washington's Asia pivot aims to constrain its development, while the US suspects that China wants to push it out of the region.

"No one can deny the existence of structural problems, but if we let the structural problems dominate bilateral ties, there will be a lose-lose situation," said Yuan. "Both countries realized the problem, so they decided to build a new type of great power relations, which stresses no confrontation or conflict."

"In the past seven months, bilateral ties went through a downward spiral, but I don't think the bottom has fallen out of the structure," he said.

A similar view was also voiced by the US side on Tuesday.

"The US-China relationship is a motion picture. It shouldn't be looked at as a snapshot," a second US official traveling with Kerry was quoted as saying by Reuters. "It is that grand epic big Hollywood motion picture in which there are a lot of actors and a lot of interests at stake, and the trajectory of any particular issue takes time to play out."

The current round of the S&ED will provide a platform for candid and even blunt exchanges between the two sides. The economic track, which might see progress on the Bilateral Investment Treaty, is expected to help stabilize the relationship.

"What really matters isn't the agreement list delivered after the S&ED. It is the positive momentum injected into bilateral ties by the dialogue following the negative trajectory of the past months," Da said. Yuan shared similar sentiments, noting Washington has already started pulling back. "Both sides will use the S&ED and Barack Obama's visit to Beijing in November to create a favorable atmosphere for warming ties."

Prior to the start of the S&ED, the fourth China-US Strategic Security Dialogue was held in Beijing on Tuesday. The meeting was chaired by China's Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui and US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns.

Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend the opening ceremony of the S&ED events and deliver a speech. Xi and Premier Li Keqiang will meet the US delegations.