At times, use of opaque language has been convenient for the United States to defuse rising tension with China.
The deletion of "strategic competitor" from the lexicon of the Bush administration, a phrase coined by the US president to describe US relations with China, should be viewed as a positive step towards reality.
On Sunday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell confirmed he had dropped the phrase because "the relationship is so complex with so many different elements to it that it's probably wiser not to capture it with a single word or a single term or cliche."
The phrase was meant to differentiate the Bush team's China strategy from that of Bill Clinton's administration, which established a "constructive strategic partnership" with China.
The semantics of the debate may reflect a fierce argument in Washington policy circles over how the United States should respond to China.
Admittedly, thoughts on what a new Sino-US relationship might be still evolving.
However, it is only detrimental to the development of the bilateral relations to allow some hawkish Americans to restructure the relationship in a way that sets aside major previous agreements and understandings, and do this on a unilateral basis.
Bush made his own contribution to the changing dynamics by breaking with traditional US policies in pledging to use "whatever it took" militarily to defend Taiwan in April.
By doing so, Bush made a major departure from the 20-year-old US policy of strategic ambiguity towards Taiwan to what appeared to be a firm commitment, only to cause strategic confusion.
That had unnecessarily made the two countries stare an impasse in the face, but that was not what they wanted.
Fortunately, with efforts from both sides, it seems a certain natural balance is re-establishing itself in the relationship.
The US change to its diplomatic lexicon can help oil the engine of bilateral relations. After all, for whatever explanation, when you view a country as a strategic competitor, you could not possibly be sincere and full-hearted in developing friendly ties with it.
Though it is too early to tell if there has been a fundamental shift in the US China policy, encapsulated in this change of language, Powell's removal of tough rhetoric from the Bush administration's description of US-China policy is a constructive move towards the building of warmer ties, which is viewed as the most important nation-to-nation relations in the world.
(China Daily 08/02/2001)
