Xi Jinping and Barack Obama's summit in the Californian desert offers fertile ground for a grand vision

The US and China are still in a position to master their national destinies. Global financial markets, fluctuations in oil, gas and food prices and the constraints of a multipolar geopolitical order can affect their economies but do not hold sway over their policies. While others react, they simply act.

The vital importance of their bilateral relations is obvious. While President Xi Jinping's predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, made their first trips to the US several years after they became China's top leaders, Barack Obama will welcome his new Chinese counterpart only three months after the power change in Beijing.

The two leaders find themselves at historical crossroads: on the paths before them lie either rising rivalry fueled by populist sentiment or the quest for a new paradigm that would accommodate the redistribution of world power; on one path is fear and the prospect of conflict, on the other the chance of working together to protect against the follies of war.

The two most powerful men on the planet will not meet in a political capital but at Sunnylands, the Annenberg estate in the Californian desert. What lies ahead there are not negotiations but a two-day retreat that favors an in-depth exchange of ideas and the working of positive personal chemistry, that intangible but essential ingredient of world politics.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, relations between China and its neighbors in the East and South China seas, cyber security, Iran, Syria and the Middle East, Central Asia, the effects of the 2008 economic crisis and climate change are the issues that will occupy the attention of the two, but, in the long term, what really matters is to address the perception gap that characterizes the relationship and to define a common grand vision.

The US side needs to demonstrate that the US pivot to Asia is not synonymous with containing China. By reaffirming that the US welcomes the Chinese renaissance and is ready to deepen cooperation with Beijing without ideological bias, Obama will help to dissipate Chinese suspicions and create a climate of trust.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership that does not include China adds to the misunderstanding created by the US pivot to Asia. As the study US-China 2022: Economic Relations in the Next 10 Years shows, the potential for Sino-American business relations is enormous, so indications that a free-trade agreement between the two largest economies in the world could become a reality would put the relationship on a constructive course.

Mutual reassurance presupposes that Xi presents the view that China's reemergence does not entail the West's decline. Even if China's return to centrality requires a new articulation between the two Pacific countries, it does not necessarily contradict long-term US interests. The US can maintain good relations with Japan, the Republic of Korea, Vietnam or the Philippines but it is with Beijing that Washington can work for the world's security and development.

Between an antagonistic bipolarity and an unrealistic political integration around the Pacific, China and the US can envision a middle way, a combination of competition and cooperation that could lead to what Henry Kissinger has called "a Pacific community".

Despite the apparent Sino-American divide on many issues, Xi and Obama are united by two fundamental realities. First, Western modernity is fully compatible with the Chinese renaissance, secularism, equality between men and women, the belief in social and economic progress are at the core of the Chinese and Western societies.

Second, while the US and China remain, to a certain extent, the last two real sovereign states in the midst of powerful globalizing forces, the magnitude of the 21st century security and development challenges exceeds their capacity to face them alone. Neither a Pax Americana nor a Pax Sinica can guarantee that the multipolar system today does not degenerate into global disorder tomorrow.

At the Sunnylands retreat, the China dream and the American dream can cross-fertilize; far from being exclusive they can be the catalysts of a world dream, an inspirational vision of equilibrium between East and West, unity and diversity, progress and sustainability.

At the end of their Californian encounter Xi and Obama do not have to reach any specific agreement, but, aware of a shared sense of global responsibility, can proclaim to the world: "We have a dream".

The author is director of the Academia Sinica Europaea at China Europe International Business School, Shanghai, Beijing & Accra, and founder of the Euro-China Forum. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

( China Daily European Weekly 06/07/2013 page10)