The US is challenged not by China, but by its own unwillingness to accept that another great power may be its equal, Beijing’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, said on Thursday.
Relations between great powers must be based on mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation, the foreign minister, who is also responsible for foreign policy in the Communist Party of China, told a press conference in Beijing. Yet Washington is apparently unwilling to abide by those principles.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden agreed to deescalate trade tensions during their meeting last November, but Washington has failed to deliver, Wang claimed.
The talks in San Francisco had deflated, to a degree, tensions which had accumulated over the year. Relations between Washington and Beijing had soured due to “spy balloon” allegations and American restrictions on high-tech chips being exported to China, among other things.
”On the US side, an erroneous perception of China persists, and US promises are not really fulfilled,” the senior official said. “The methods of suppressing China are constantly being renewed, and the list of unilateral sanctions is constantly being extended.”
In its effort to accuse China of wrongdoing, the US has reached “an unbelievable level of absurdity,” he added.
”If the United States says one thing and does another, where is its credibility as a major country? If it gets jittery whenever it hears the word ‘China’, where is its confidence as a major country?” Wang asked rhetorically.
He suggested that the US wants to monopolize “the high end of the value chain”, keeping other nations down rather than accepting their legitimate desire for economic development. Such an approach is not how fair competition works, according to the minister.
”The challenge for the United States comes from itself, not from China. If the United States is obsessed with suppressing China, it will eventually harm itself,” Wang warned.
The US should correct its course and act rationally when dealing with China, because the future of the world depends on how the two treat each other, the diplomat said.