President Xi has presented a concise summary of the new-type major-country relationship: no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect, win-win cooperation. It’s regrettable that Mr. Nye has misread the Chinese leader’s proposal as China seeks a “US-China hegemony (G2)”, and claimed that the United States would not tolerate Chinese hegemony. Everybody knows very well who is conducting hegemony in the world.

At last, Mr. Nye did not forget to condemn China’s current diplomatic policies in front of the Japanese. He claimed that China felt its economy increasingly strong after the 2008 financial crisis while that of the US’ has been declining, and thus abandoned the low-profile diplomatic policies that had been in place since the Deng Xiaopingera, damaging relations with such neighboring countries as Japan. He even came to the conclusion that the stronger its self-confidence, the worse its conditions. This is a major dilemma for China. As a well-known scholar, how could Mr. Nye ignore reality and the peaceful diplomatic policies China has adhered to?

The Lianhe Zaobao in Singapore published an article on April 22 titled “Taking China as An Enemy Would Accelerate US Decline”. I would like to recommend it to Mr. Nye. The article observed that US judgments about China weren’t made on the basis of China’s historical or present international behaviors, but of its own deep-rooted ideologies. Americans believe a rising power will inevitably challenge the existing one, and tend to impose their own thinking on other countries. It seems that if the US cannot correct its strategic misjudgments about China, and cannot restrain its infinite strategic greed, it may inevitably fall into such a logic and embark on a course of decline at a higher speed.

Talking about this, it occurs to me that in his book Soft Power, Mr. Nye quoted in positive tone what a Norwegian diplomat said to him: Every country wants to promote the values it earnestly believes. As the richest country in the world, the US’ most vulnerable aspects of its soft-power schemes are undisguised double standards and instability.

I appreciate Mr. Nye’s pragmatic attitude here, and wish he could understand and treat China in consistence with such an attitude.

Yu Sui is a Professor with the China Center for Contemporary World Studies.

This article was first published at chinausfocus.com To see the original version please visit http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/joseph-nye-is-wrong/