The trade and economic relationships between China and the United States have provided an essential calming influence over many decades. Now, the international community is concerned that they may break down.

China needs to figure out how to respond constructively to provocations by the United States, especially as the rhetoric heats up in a presidential election year. I have some suggestions.

A desire for all-around containment of China by the United States — pushed by hawkish political elements — is a major error that only boxes the two countries into the so-called Thucydides trap. Conflict will have no winners.

How the United States decides to tilt the delicately balanced scales will determine whether relations with China will heal or erode further. Both countries stand to gain from cooperation, and both will lose by confrontation. We need to remove the painful barbs with patience.

While the US and China have entered a new phase in their relationship, it is misleading to call it a new cold war. Both sides should find the requisite “bottoms” and “safety nets” that establish a framework that best suits the US-China cooperative rivalry.

Against the backdrop of a trade war and a global pandemic, the U.S. and China cannot afford war. It is in the best interest of both nations, and America’s allies, for the two to meet to better understand each other’s interests and priorities.

While the Pompeo-Yang summit was a welcome respite in an otherwise escalating great power conflict, the summit seems little more than a chance for each side to probe the other’s redlines on the myriad of issues on which they disagree.

A desirable prospect for future China-U.S. relations is that rational deliberations prevail and the two parties formulate a stable relationship of “coopetition.” Unfortunately, the current U.S. administration has little interest in moving in that direction.

There are many reasons to conclude that the downturn in relations between China and the United States is a temporary phenomenon.

While Xi Jinping leads China into an unprecedented era of economic expansion, President Trump blames China for American economic stagnation. Blame is neither a strategy nor a plan – but domestic investment is.