Individuals May Offer Best Hope For U.S.-China Ties
Forbes
The following is an excerpt from an article originally published in Forbes detailing Asia Society and Asia Society Policy Institute President Kevin Rudd's remarks at an online conference organized by the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the China Thoracic Oncology Group.
The incoming Biden administration won’t have “fairy dust” to improve current U.S.-China relations, Asia Society Policy Institute President Kevin Rudd said at a symposium on Saturday that aimed to boost collaboration between the two countries to fight cancer.
“The current state of the relationship between the United States and China — and Australia and China — is a mess,” said Rudd, the former Australian prime minister.
“I cannot promise that the Biden administration is going to produce a magical solution for the future U.S.-China relations,” he said. “There will be no fairy dust to sprinkle from on high; it will be more complex than that.”
Yet individual efforts to promote better ties can make a difference, Rudd said. “I know from my experience both in politics and in foreign policy that it is women and men of talent and ability that make the difference. We’re not captured by some anonymous forces of history here, propelling us in the direction of inevitable crisis, conflict and war.”
Rudd addressed a gathering of hundreds of cancer specialists around the world organized by the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, or MSK, in New York and the China Thoracic Oncology Group, or CTONG, in Guangzhou. The online conference discussed scientific and regulatory initiatives involving clinical trials that would allow for increased collaboration between the two countries.
Given the current environment, collaboration among groups such as MSK and CTONG “is more important than ever,” Rudd said. Joining forces in mutually beneficial areas such as cancer research may also fit into the political interests of leaders of the two sides at the moment. “I think both the Chinese and Americans at the senior political level will be looking for avenues in which these countries — given the reality of great power tensions — can collaborate in the period which lies ahead of us in the next four years,” Rudd said. “Practical areas which they can easily sell to their domestic constituencies, practical areas which are of benefit to ordinary working people in these countries and practical areas of benefit to peoples all across the world” will be welcomed, he said.