We have an inescapable responsibility – a shared duty – to lead in the direction of stability, prosperity, and peace. And it is up to us and to our successors to ensure that America and China are more partners than rivals, more in agreement than disagreement about the rule of law, more in harmony than at odds over priorities, and more confident with each passing year in each other’s intentions.

For China and the US, we need to maintain frequent communication and build up strategic mutual trust in order to avoid strategic misjudgment and prevent temporary problems from affecting our overall relations. With sufficient mutual trust, China-US cooperation will stand on a more solid basis and enjoy even more robust growth.

China has no ambition to dominate Asia or the world, and Washington must resist misconstruing China’s development strategies and policies. It is imperative that the two countries dispel misgivings and strengthen communication, deepen understanding and mutual trust, in order to build a new type of major-country relations featuring non-confrontation, non-conflict and win-win cooperation.

President Barack Obama’s announcement that he will lift the decades-old embargo on the sale of military equipment to Vietnam raises the question of whether or not it will alter the military balance in the South China Sea. This outcome, Stefan-Gady argues, depends on both the effective training and the ability to successfully integrate new weapons systems within the existing military structures.

The foreign policy of a sovereign country is closely associated with making friends, but foreign policy is not the only factor. With the ongoing implementation of its policy of reform and opening-up, China continues to make more new friends with developing and developed countries. Now, China has established economic, trade and cultural relations with almost all countries and regions in the world – all without benefit of a military-alliance system.

Duterte’s strong performance at the polls seems to demonstrate Filipinos’ approval of a new approach to the South China Sea problem by holding bilateral talks with China and the U.S. But if these talks fail to benefit of the Filipino people, particularly on Filipino fishermen who are greatly affected by sea disputes, Duterte may use the arbitration decision as a second option.

With the US picking and choosing what parts of customary international law it embraces, the FON operations are clearly exercises of hegemonic power projection so as to establish a US-dominated maritime legal order beyond a world ocean legal order guaranteed under UNCLOS. As for the FON operations conducted in the South China Sea, they are no more than a tool to carry out the US “Pivot to Asia” strategy.

U.S.-China relations are too important for the people of the two nations and for the world. At this point, protecting U.S.-China relations must be the first priority. It is time for the two countries to rethink and re-evaluate, with urgency, the issues involved.

China's top diplomat in Washington argues that both Beijing and Washington need a new vision for a bilateral relationship based on new realities in the world and form a new partnership to work together to deal with global challenges of today. In doing so, he claims, both can better accomplish domestic goals and fulfill international roles.

One week before his Hiroshima visit, U.S. President Barack Obama said in his interview with NHK that his purpose is not to revisit the past, but to affirm the need of peace and a world without nuclear weapons. Whereas the declared message of his Hiroshima visit is denuclearization, the unspoken connotations could be more meaningful.