00:00Wilfries Arne-Pettersen is Denmark's former ambassador to China, the United States and Germany.
00:06The style and symbols still matters for us humans, but of course they are taking much more care of their
00:14national interest
00:15as they define them in Beijing and in Washington.
00:19I was actually very fortunate also to be a Danish ambassador to China after five years in Washington.
00:25So I do think that I understand the differences, but also the common interest in international cooperation
00:33from these two excessively global countries that simply do more international cooperation and outreach than anybody else in the world.
00:45And, of course, the niceties, the fine protocol, the grand public circumstance, you would probably call it in the UK,
00:54that matters somehow, and it affects them, though they still will be pursuing their national interests.
01:01So we should never be lured into believing that they can smile and smile and still be a villain.
01:07With your European hat on, simply from a European perspective,
01:11what would a more stable United States-China relationship mean for the European Union?
01:17I think a lot, simply because the world economy develops better in times of stability and peace.
01:28And the many wars and armed conflicts that the world has been seeing the last many years,
01:35I think the UN numbers, the number of conflicts, not just to three or five or ten, but to up
01:41in the fifties and sixties,
01:42it's enormously important that the United States and China get along as well as they seem to do.
01:50I would add, though, for many people, that seems to be then therefore good and tranquil and stable.
01:59But there is, underneath this surface of trade policy, truce, of course, an enormous rivalry and competition
02:08to become the most advanced and sophisticated economy, depending on all the sophisticated technologies
02:15that both the United States and China, as the two sole powers of the world,
02:20seem so capable of developing better than anybody else.
02:24Europe has its own complex relationship with China.
02:28I wonder how should Europe position itself as Washington and Beijing try to manage their strategic competition,
02:36their strategic relationship?
02:40In my eyes, it's important for Europe to get the best possible bilateral relationship
02:48between the European Union and the United States, but also between the European Union and China.
02:54It's very different relations we have with the United States and China.
02:59You could say that we come from a historical, very close security and defense cooperation with the United States.
03:05That is changing, however, but also with China, a limited economic and scientific
03:13and maybe environmental and energy cooperation that grows into more sophisticated parts
03:20of a more complicated economic and political relationship.
