Other ideas that should belong to this series were scattered throughout my blogs since my April installment. Here is a brief summary.
I borrowed the short-hand of a G2 from the media, not knowing what the letter G entailed. From my writings it should be clear, though, that I am not proposing a global governing body consisting U.S. and China. In fact, the very idea of a global governing body implies the existence of the governed countries, which is in contradiction with pragmatic philosophy.
I felt Sino-U.S. relationship is important not because these two countries can become great friends. Frankly, a lot of other countries have better potential than China in that regard. Sino-U.S. relationship is important because, from my own experience, the risk of a potential conflict is great. Therefore my starting point is to find a way to avoid potential conflict between China and U.S. Only after U.S. and China build a enduring cooperative relationship based on that common philosophy, will that relationship become a magnet for other countries to join in. In that sense, when, say, Europe subscribes to the same common philosophy, U.S., China and Europe will become a G3, etc. As such, my idea of a G2 is ultimately an open concept aimed at global cooperation which will necessarily result in a multi-polar world. And I felt that East Asia should be able to make a particularly significant contribution to that global cooperation because of the Confucian sensibilities of its people.
When I first put my thought on the future Sino-U.S. relationship, the key word came in my mind was complementarity. This was precisely a manifestation of pragmatic thinking based on the basic facts I already put forward, i.e., the United States is essentially a central-right country and China a central-left one. Following similar thinking, one can then easily see how I have gotten my ideas of "China as counterbalance to America's hegemonic tendencies", "China and the developing world", a more democratic international order, etc.
