U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns called for further engagement with China, saying that communication, transparency and trust are essential in the stability of long-term China-U.S. relationship.

"Today's U.S.-China relationship is evolving in another period of extreme dynamism and change in international politics," said Burns.

He spoke at the China-U.S. Relations Conference held in Texas A&M University on October 24, the fifth in a series starting in 2003. Burns will then travel to Beijing on October 27, a visit that the U.S. State Department said "reflects sustained, high-level U.S. engagement with China and our commitment to building a positive, cooperative, and comprehensive relationship."

Burns noted that people sometimes have the mistaken idea that relationships between the two countries are easy or there are no more than the pre-determined outcomes of a set of interests. "This is going to be an enormous challenge for both of us for many years to come. Neither conflict nor cooperation is preordained," Burns said, adding, "The choices each of us make matter enormously to the outcome and the stakes could not be higher."

Burns also pointed out that the two countries have both "significant common ground" and "important differences," which according to him require the deepening of communication, transparency and trust to "avoid misunderstanding and prevent crises."

The deputy secretary's speech perhaps reflects what Professor Robert Art of Brandeis University described as the "optimistic realist" thought regarding the U.S. strategy toward China.

According to Art, a professor of international relations, there are three distinct thoughts (or schools) in approaching the question of how the United States should do to deal with rising Chinese power, each been informed by a particular theory of how international relations works.

The optimistic realist school, in which Art categorized himself, believes that "through skillful diplomacy and policy and wise choices by both countries", China and the United States can avoid a Cold War or violent conflicts. The thought is that harmony between the two countries isn't automatic, while conflicts aren't inevitable either. Art concluded that the master plan here is "mixed strategy of both engagement and containment and balancing by the United States."

Apart from that, the other two schools are on the opposition direction.

The "don't worry so much school" has two variants, Art said during a panel discussion at the same conference. One is the liberal institutions which think that China does not want to subvert the liberal and open economic order because it benefits largely from it and the strategy for the United States here is to engage China, said Art. The other variant is so-called "offshore balancing," which argues that the United States should stand back and allow its regional partners to use their resources to balance China.

The "gloom and doom school" is the opposite perspective. "We're in a power transition phase," said Art, "The power transition historically has never been peaceful and there is no reason to believe why this should be either." In this view, power transition is highly destabilized and China will seek to do what every other great power in the past had done, "which is to shake the international environment in ways that are congenial to its interests," Art noted. The strategy here is about "containment and balancing against growing Chinese power," Art added.

Robert Ross, Professor of Political Science of Boston College, also considered himself an optimistic realist. He said that the United States and China are not going to be ally, nor friends, but "strategic competitors."

"Within that large context, there is large room for cooperation," said Ross.

(Reporting from College Station, Texas)