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July 27, 2021

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Change misguided mindset, US told

THE China-US relationship is in a stalemate, fundamentally because some Americans portray China as an “imagined enemy,” Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng said yesterday, urging the United States to change its highly misguided mindset and dangerous policy.

Xie made the remarks yesterday during talks with US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who was on a two-day visit to north China’s port city of Tianjin on Sunday and yesterday.

For quite some time, when talking about conflict with China and challenges facing the United States, the “Pearl Harbor moment” and the “Sputnik moment” have been brought up by some Americans, Xie said.

Some US academics perceive this as comparing China to Japan in World War II and the Soviet Union in the Cold War. It seems as if by making China an “imagined enemy,” a national sense of purpose would be reignited in the United States. The hope may be that by demonizing China, the United States could somehow shift domestic public discontent over political, economic and social issues and blame China for its own structural problems, he said.

It seems that a whole-of-government and whole-of-society campaign is being waged to bring China down. It is as if when China’s development is contained, all US domestic and external challenges would go away, and America would become great again and Pax Americana would continue to go on, Xie said.

In terms of the United States’ “competitive, collaborative and adversarial” rhetoric, Xie said this is a thinly veiled attempt to contain and suppress China.

The Chinese people feel that the real emphasis is on the adversarial aspect, the collaborative aspect is just expediency, and the competitive aspect is a narrative trap, he said.

The US policy seems to be demanding cooperation when it wants something from China; decoupling, cutting off supplies, blockading or sanctioning China when it believes it has an advantage; and resorting to conflict and confrontation at all costs, he added.

“It seems that the United States only thinks about addressing its own concerns, getting the results it wants and advancing its own interests. Do bad things and get good results. How is that even possible?” Xie said.

What the world needs most is solidarity and cooperation, for humanity are passengers in the same boat, according to Xie.

“China wants to work with the United States to seek common ground while shelving the differences,” he said.

The United States is the “inventor and patent and intellectual property owner” of coercive diplomacy, Xie said.

The Chinese believe that one must not do to others what one does not like to be done to himself. The desire to seek hegemony or territorial expansion is simply not in the Chinese DNA.

“China has never coerced any country,” Xie said, adding that China responds to foreign interference with legitimate and lawful countermeasures, and the aim is to defend the legitimate rights and interests of the country and uphold international equity and justice.

China has put forward two lists to the US during the talks. In the List of US Wrongdoings that Must Stop, China urged the US to revoke the visa restrictions over CPC members and their families, revoke sanctions on Chinese leaders, officials and government agencies, and remove visa restrictions on Chinese students.

China also urged the US to stop suppressing Chinese enterprises, revoke the registration of Chinese media outlets as “foreign agents” or “foreign missions,” and revoke the extradition request for Meng Wanzhou.

In another list, China expressed serious concerns over Chinese students’ visa applications being rejected, Chinese citizens receiving unfair treatment, diplomatic and consular missions being harassed and rammed into by perpetrators in the United States.




 

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