BEIJING, Dec. 12 -- If history offers any guide, respecting each other's core interests is a fundamental principle for the healthy development of China-U.S. relations.
In a world that considers secessionism as a common enemy, the Taiwan issue is one of China's core interests, making the one-China policy a bedrock for Sino-U.S. relations, the most important bilateral ties of the international community.
In the history of the 37-year-long diplomatic relationship between Beijing and Washington, upholding the one-China policy has become a consensus of successive presidents of the United States. As they have all realized, sooner or later, the one-China policy allows no bargaining and a deviation from the established policy pattern toward China leads to unwanted consequences.
Take the Bill Clinton administration as an example. According to Henry Kissinger, a seasoned diplomat who served as Secretary of State in the Nixon administration, in the early term of the Clinton administration, Clinton tried to deviate from the established policy pattern toward China.
On Oct. 24, 1995, the Clinton administration announced its decision to permit the then Taiwan leader Lee Teng-hui to pay a "private visit" to the United States in June of the same year, making Sino-U.S. relations plummet to their lowest point.
"In two years, President Clinton realized that our established pattern was in our (the United States' and China's) common interests" and then Clinton "became one of the strongest supporters of this way of international relations," Kissinger said Tuesday in New York at an event called "Leaders Speak: Secretaries of State."
Given their clout, China and the United States must maintain a close and friendly relationship and world peace relies on their ability to do so.
For two persons who want to be close friends, respect and honesty are the keys to intimacy. By the same token, if the United States wants to build a close and friendly relationship with China, it must know where to draw the line. His predecessors have set good examples for him, now the ball is in President-elect Donald Trump's court.