Commentary: Maintain ballast of China-U.S. relations

Predictions that China-U.S. frictions will escalate after Donald Trump was inaugurated as the president of the United States have not materialized.

Ahead of the scheduled China-U.S. presidents' meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Florida in the United States, China watchers should reflect on the tone of interactions between the two countries' top leaders and meetings between diplomatic and financial officials. The tone? Cooperation.

Neither side can afford to sacrifice cooperation. Thus, the China-U.S. relationship will continue to sail forward, buoyed by the two nations' nearly 520-billion-dollar trade relationship.

China-U.S. trade by 2016 was 200 times more than it was in 1979, when the two countries established diplomatic ties.

The healthy trade relationship has created jobs. Two-way trade and mutual investment in 2015 created 2.6 million jobs for the United States, according to statistics from the U.S.-China Business Council based in Washington.

The efficient way to benefit both peoples is to make a larger "cake" of shared interests. Cooperation is the only way forward.

In fact, a closer inspection of the existing trade imbalances between the two countries shows that 40 percent of China's trade surplus with the United States came from U.S. companies in China.

If there were a trade war, it would be foreign-funded companies, particularly U.S. firms, that would lose out.

All that a trade war would achieve is damage to a close, interwoven relationship that has benefited the two nations, and the world, for decades.

The upcoming meetings at Mar-a-Lago have the power to send a positive signal to the world.

Guided by the principle of upholding non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation, China is ready to work with the U.S. side to expand cooperation and manage their differences. Endi