“Understanding one another, whether among the citizens, or between our nations is no easy endeavor.” Jimmy Carter, 39^th U.S. President, stated in a letter of greeting to the 2021 “Understanding China” Conference (Guangzhou) and Paige Alexander, CEO of the Carter Center read the letter via video link on December 2 at the opening ceremony of the conference. Amid the deterioration of the US-China relationship, Carter believed it is essential for the two nations to appreciate each other as misunderstanding is one of the main causes of the sharp decline of the bilateral relationship is a sheer lack of understanding between the two countries.

Paige Alexander, CEO of the Carter Center [Photo/Keane, Newsgd.com]

“What can we achieve when we do work together?” This was the question raised by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown while remarking the opening ceremony. But what is the precondition for the globe to work together? In the eyes of former Australian PrimeMinister Kevin Rudd, “only by understanding”. He said, “It's fair to say, the future of China or whither it is going is something people wish to understand more.”

As Gordon Brown pointed out, over the last half century China has moved from a low-income country to a middle-income country and is now on course to be a high-income country. “For decades you have been achieving continuously high growth rates that are unparalleled in the history of the world economy”, he exclaimed.

However, as the world is confronting huge global challenges that require global solutions and can only be adequately addressed by collaboration. More people are increasingly interested in China including its civilization, development mode, its relationship with the rest of the world and so on.

Paige Alexander used the experience of President Carter and the Carter Center to highlight how to achieve mutual understanding - President Carter's first trip to China took place in 1949. He was then a submarine officer. There was a civil war in China. He did not quite understand the complexity of the Chinese situation but he did observe that the Nationalist Party (KMT) was not popular. President Carter's next trip to China was in 1981, after he left the White House, when Deng Xiaoping told him to visit China whenever he liked to. And the former President has made many trips since. His last visit to China was in September 2014 at the age of 90. Changes in China between 1981 in 2014 were even bigger and more significant.

“Since President Carter has visited China so often, he understands these significant changes have given the Chinese people more freedoms, made the party more popular, enabled China to become the second largest economy in the world and made it possible for China to influence global affairs”, said Alexander. She added that “as one of the oldest democracies in the world, the U.S. still has a long way to go to improve its political institutions. But there has to be more effort to understand other countries, political systems more objectively and approach them with no prejudice in hysteria.”

Kevin Rudd,former Australian Prime Minister [Photo/Keane, Newsgd.com]

According to Kevin Rudd, in addition to climate change, there are other areas in which US-China collaboration could improve: Climate finance, global debt management and financial security, and cooperation on cancer trials and so on. He said these are all immensely promising areas to explore as China and the US hopefully enter a new phase in their relationship. “Working together in these areas has real potential to make possible a better common future, not only for China and the US, but for all humankind”, he stressed.

Reported by Keane

Edited by Jerry