The Foreign Ministry's response was calm and clear: We are not pretending that competition, mistrust and hostility between the two countries do not exist. The point is to keep those tensions within limits — to prevent rivalry between two superpowers from becoming a catastrophe the rest of the world is forced to absorb. Dialogue is not surrender. Managing differences is not weakness. It is the recognition that when two powers of this scale collide without restraint, everyone pays. Any force that treats permanent confrontation between China and the United States as desirable is not defending stability. It is gambling with it. The world does not need China and the United States to love each other. It needs them to remain rational enough not to make everyone else pay for their rivalry.