"China's Peaceful Rise & Sino-American Relations"
Conference in Beijing draws scholars, government officials, & business leaders
Professor Richard Baum, director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, presented a paper at a conference on "China's Peaceful Rise and Sino-American Relations," cosponsored by the Rand Corporation and the China Reform Forum (CRF) of the Central Party School in Beijing, August 30–31.
The meeting was hosted by Zheng Bijian, chairman of the CRF, and was attended by sixty prominent Chinese and American scholars, diplomats, and leaders from the business community. On the Chinese side, papers were presented by, inter alia, Wang Jisi, director of the American Studies Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Science; Hu Angang, director of the Center for China Studies, Qinghua University; Li Junru, Vice-Chairman of the CRF; and Major-General Pan Zhenqiang, emeritus director of the Institute of Strategic Studies, National Defense University. On the U.S. side, key papers were presented by Charles Wolf and William Overholt of the Rand Corporation, and David Aaron, former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce. Professor Richard Baum presented a paper on "Recent Trends in US-China Security Relations: Taiwan and South Korea." The keynote address at the conference was given by the Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Zhou Wenzhong, whose remarks focused on the increasing seriousness of the situation in the Taiwan Strait.
The expression "China's peaceful rise" has become something of a mantra (if not a cliché) in China since it was first used in 2003. In April of 2004, Chinese president Hu Jintao explained that "a country can emerge victorious from tough international competition and enjoy faster development only when it gets along with the tide of the times, seizes the opportunities for development, blazes a trail suited to its national conditions and relies on the wisdom and resourcefulness of its own people." Elaborating on this notion, Zheng Bijian declared: "The only choice for China under the current international situation was to rise peacefully, namely, to develop by taking advantage of the peaceful international environment, and at the same time, to maintain world peace through its development. In the process of economic globalization, China's peaceful rise relies both on the country's domestic economy and the international marketplace to sustain and fuel growth."
Published: Thursday, September 09, 2004
