SINGAPORE: A potential third “grand bargain” between the United States and China will require Washington to reconform to its one-China policy and “stop containing and suppressing” Beijing in the name of strategic competition, says an eminent Chinese scholar.

If the US were to make such moves, Beijing would reciprocate both economically and on the security front, and possibly even take an “easier” attitude towards the issue of Taiwan, according to Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies and director at the Centre for American Studies at Fudan University.

Wu made the remarks on Thursday (Oct 9) in Singapore while delivering a lecture on the evolution of the Asia-Pacific regional security landscape. It was organised by the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS).

“If in the next 10 years, 20 years, China and the US can strike a grand bargain, as they did in the past, that will lead to a … future with the interplay among multiple actors with a blend of behaviour such as cooperation, hedging and competition,” he said, in his 30-minute lecture.

It was followed by a 50-minute dialogue session during which the topic of a Sino-US grand bargain dominated discussions as fellow academics and journalists pressed him on how such a deal might realistically take shape.

Globally, talk of a US-China grand bargain - where both sides make reciprocal concessions to reset their fraught bilateral relationship - has intensified in recent months as an uneasy trade truce endures between the world’s two largest economies.

It also comes as a potential in-person meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump looms later this month at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in South Korea, although significant scepticism remains over whether such a sweeping deal is achievable.