China responded Tuesday after the top U.S. diplomat characterized it as a “pacing challenge.”
In an October 1 article for Foreign Policy titled “America’s Strategy of Renewal— Rebuilding Leadership for New World,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a sunny review of the Biden administration’s record on global affairs.
Blinken also praised the administration’s outreach and coordination with allies and partners against “revisionist” powers such as China, which he called “the only country with the intent and the means to reshape the international system.”
“It’s not the first time that U.S. officials made these groundless remarks,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said when asked to comment during the daily press conference the ministry reconvened following China’s Golden Week holidays.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Reproaching Washington for clinging to a “Cold War” mindset in global affairs and China relations, she said: “We’ve made it clear more than once that major-country competition is not what the world needs and will by no means solve the U.S.’s own problems or address challenges facing the world.”
Mao said China has always made contributions to global development, maintained world peace and been a “defender of the international order.”
She drew a contrast with the U.S., which she cast as aggressive, coercive and prone to engage in unfair competition, and she accused Washington of projecting its “hegemonic history and mentality” onto other countries.
“This severe misjudgment of China and China-U.S. relations does not serve the fundamental interests of the two peoples or meet the common expectation of the international community,” Mao said.
Newsweek reached out by email to the U.S. State Department for comment.
The nations with the world’s largest and second-largest economies continue to be at odds over a wide range of issues, from trade policy and semiconductors to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and China’s territorial ambitions for Taiwan and the South China Sea.
President Joe Biden’s summit with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in California last November was widely viewed as lowering the temperature of the great powers’ competition.
In his article, Blinken pointed out that the meeting led to the resumption of military-to-military talks at the leadership level and showed that disagreements would not derail the countries’ strong commercial ties.
“Nor would we allow friction in U.S.-Chinese relations to preclude cooperation on priorities that matter to the American people and the rest of the world, such as dealing with climate change, stopping the flow of synthetic drugs, and preventing nuclear proliferation,” he wrote.
