Former U.S. secretary of state: China, U.S. indispensable for future global efforts

"The very last thing we should do during the current crisis is to make it worse by discouraging international trade and investment," he said.

In the longer term, Baker said China and the U.S. must also work together to reduce destabilizing structural imbalances in the world economy.

The U.S. must lower its deficit and encourage increases in savings while China should build on its recent stimulus packages to foster more robust domestic consumption, he said.

Meanwhile, he said "those differences exist, as they do between all countries and all great powers," and what the two sides should do in times of tension is to restrain the rhetoric on both sides, keep lines of communications open and "find compromises that allow us to meet each other half way."

Calling the past three decades "an astonishing 30 years for Sino-American relations," Baker voiced confidence that the next 30 years can be similarly extraordinary if Chinese and U.S. leaders are "wise enough to understand the opportunities that lie before us and brave enough to seize them."

Editor:Liu Anqi