At an unusual inauguration closed to the public due to the raging coronavirus pandemic, Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th President of the US on Wednesday at the West Front of the Capitol, which was breached two weeks ago by violent protesters trying to overturn his election victory.

Just hours after his inauguration, he signed a record-breaking 17 executive orders, including returning the US to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, rejoining WHO, and requiring masks and physical distancing in epidemic prevention, dismantling his predecessor's policies faster and more aggressively than any other modern US president.

What Biden inherited from the prior administration is a wrecked economy, deteriorating COVID-19 situation, worsening social inequality, and a tarnished international reputation, especially a severely bruised Sino-US relationship, battered by a handful of anti-China hawks.

The past four years have witnessed a downward spiral of relations between the world’s two largest economies. The fundamental reason lies in the serious misconceptions of US policymakers about China.

Some China hawks in the Trump administration kidnapped bilateral relations for their personal political gain, hysterically hardening attacks against China, which ended up harming the interests of people in both countries and causing severe disruptions to the world.

A recent report by the US-China Business Council and Oxford Economics warns that if the US continues its attempt to “decouple” from China, the US economy would generate $1.6 trillion less in real GDP terms over the next five years, 732,000 fewer jobs in 2022 and 320,000 fewer jobs in 2025.

Instead of seeing China as its enemy, the new US administration should return to a sensible approach, and exercise rationality to the bilateral relations.

As two major countries in the world, China and the US have important interwoven interests. Fighting the pandemic, tackling climate change, reviving the economy...These top priorities on Biden’s agenda are not only US domestic issues, but also global challenges that call for global solidarity and coordination.

Without the cooperation of the two largest economies, it is hard to imagine that any of these global challenges can be dealt with successfully.

History shows that when the countries can properly handle each other’s core and major interests, China-US relations will grow smoothly. Otherwise, they will be in trouble.

In the past four years, the US was obsessed with meddling in China’s internal affairs, and repeatedly damaged China’s core interests based on its own ideology.

The US needs to respect the two countries’ social and political differences and the development path chosen by the Chinese people.

Likewise, the US also needs to respect Chinese people’s legitimate rights to pursue a better life. The US should be clear that the best way to keep one's lead is through constant self-improvement, not by blocking others' development. More frankly, a trade and tech war with China won’t help the US maintain its superiority, but conversely accelerate its decline.

When Biden said in his inaugural speech that “few people in our nation's history have been more challenged,” perhaps it is a signal that now the US should focus on making itself a better country.

If the US administration can restore rationality to bilateral relations, the two major countries are surely capable of resolving differences through dialogue, expanding converging interests by cooperation, and establishing a model of coexistence that benefits both countries and the world.