Can China, America work together to help stabilize economy?

A hundred years ago, London would have made sense as the spot where the world's leaders should gather, as they will this week, to grapple with a spreading economic crisis. The city was the early 20th century's nexus of finance and power, and Britain straddled the globe as the only true superpower. But we're in the 21st century now, and the G20 heads of state should not be plotting in the shadow of Big Ben. They should be sitting across from Mao's Tomb, near the Forbidden City, in the meeting halls off Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

The first G20 meeting, last fall, appropriately took place in Washington. But holding this second conclave in Beijing would have signaled a clear recognition that the Washington-Beijing axis is the most important relationship in the world today; it is the X factor in the quest to rescue the global economy. If the two powerhouses work together, the world may yet emerge prosperous and stable. If they work at cross purposes, the world's future will be as grim as the gloomiest doomsayers forecast.

Can they do it? Some look at the relationship and see only complications, worrying that if China sells off or stops buying U.S. bonds, the American economy could sink even deeper, leaving us like England at the end of War World II, a broke and broken hegemon, dependent on an upstart power. The parallel overlooks one critical difference: Today, China needs the United States as much as the United States needs China. This isn't codependence; it's interdependence, especially since the rest of the world needs both of them equally.

For Beijing and Washington to pull the world out of this Great Recession, they must overcome both mutual suspicion and self-perceptions that are quickly losing validity. China is no longer as poor as it claims; the United States is no longer as rich as it acts. This transition will be tough for both. China is a bit like a newly muscular adolescent; it is gaining power but doesn't yet know how to wield it or to what purpose. As for Washington, it must learn to use muscles it hasn't stretched for many years, muscles that are adept at collaboration rather than dictation, that are flexible rather than simply big.

Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has remarked that the world should focus less on the G20 and more on a "G2" of China and the United States. In many respects, the two nations have become a single economic system; historian Niall Ferguson has even coined the term "Chimerica" to describe their symbiosis.

In 2008, before the storm hit, China and the United States accounted for more than half of all global economic growth. This year, even in a worst-case scenario, China will probably grow 7 percent as the world economy contracts and the United States suffers through at least two more quarters of deep recession.