The National Security Agency's surveillance scandal is the first big test for Sino-US ties after presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping met in California early this month. Understandably, some Chinese observers already believe that cybersecurity is just the latest US tactic to try to contain China's rise. This security debacle underscores the need to restore strategic trust, which could be facilitated through US-Chinese cooperation in multipolar counterterrorism.

A power shift is in the making, and the cybersecurity issue can't stop this. In fact, the California summit between Xi and Obama heralds the transition from US hegemony to China's peaceful rise, which can be described as a once-in-a-century transition. This tradition will accelerate with the impending eclipse of the US Federal Reserve's quantitative easing.

On the eve of the California summit, Western observers compared it with the historic meeting between Chairman Mao Zedong and former US president Richard Nixon in 1972. But the comparison may not be appropriate.