Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

During Chinese President Xi Jinping's stay in Seattle, he announced that China will provide financial support for 50,000 Chinese and US students to study in each other's country. This indicates the brightest future for China-US relations. This piece of news reminded me of the views on the US of my father's generation.

My late father was a long-term member of the Communist Party of China (CPC). The day after Japanese invaders attacked Shanghai on August 13, 1937, he left Pudong for Yan'an to join the CPC's revolution.

He showed much interest when I started writing commentaries on the China-US relationship about 10 years ago. He not only read through each of my articles, but also often discussed with me my points of view.

After some time, I could often sense a deeply rooted vigilance from the way that my father regards the Sino-US relationship. "That country again finds fault with us," he would told me with anxiety whenever he read reports such as the US selling weapons to Taiwan.

The understanding of my father's generation for the US was closely linked to the Korean War (1950-53). He once told me that when they were in Yan'an the CPC members had positive impressions of the US.

But things changed after the Korean War. The US became an enemy and its policy on China was to press for a peaceful evolution away from Communism.

This understanding has lasted till even many years after the reform and opening-up. As a result, today my generation has been still unable to shake off the influence of past days on China-US relations.

It's similar in the US. Americans of my father's generation also hold uneasiness about China deep in their heart and this has been exerting influence on Washington's decision-making toward China.

In 2011, I paid a visit to the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial where 17,097 American servicemen who sacrificed their lives during the Pacific War rest. Most of them were young people in their 20s, like Private Ryan in the eponymous movie.

I met some US veterans and their offspring there. Upon chattering, I could feel their unusual feelings for the land where their peers and predecessors had shed blood. What came to my mind at the moment was the famous words of former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, "We are back."

This was first expressed by General MacArthur when US forces recaptured the Philippine Islands from the Japanese troops.

But when Clinton repeated the words in 2010 in Hanoi, the message she sent was not confidence, but worry.

What's on the mind of Americans is simply that China's rise will challenge the order that the US has built in the Asia-Pacific region.

What China concerns is that Washington's decisions may intentionally harm China's political order. These two kinds of historic worries constitute the main reason that today mutual trust is still absent between China and the US.

This is regarded by Chinese scholar Wang Jisi as an issue of "two orders."

To address it, I think, we need to look forward and put hopes on the younger generation of both countries. These young people will have more confidence in the development and position of China and the US. They will understand it more accurately, and so they carry a lighter historical burden.

As of 2014, about 490,000 young Chinese people have studied in the US and more than 100,000 young Americans have done the same in China.

This is where the hope and future of the China-US relationship lies.

Some experts think that these young people have no personal experience of the Cold War and hence lack a deep understanding of the other side. But from a different perspective, it is because of the lack of such experience that they will not be obsessed with the anxiety resulting from history.

Currently, the group that has the biggest influence in the public opinion over the bilateral relationship, no matter they are government officials, media practitioners or scholars, mainly consists of people over 50 years old, like me.

We have to carry the burden of history, but we will walk out of its shadow.

After our predecessors such as Deng Xiaoping started a new era of China-US relations, we become the main benefactors of the development of the bilateral relationship and meanwhile shoulder the responsibilities of linking the past and the future.

As long as we can do a good job and have good communication, the generations to come will walk more confidently on a broad and solid bridge that connects the two sides across the Pacific.

The author is a senior editor with People's Daily. He is now stationed in Brazil. dinggang@globaltimes.com.cn. Follow him on Twitter @dinggangchina

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