US is making ‘serious strategic misjudgment’ in its accusations against China, Beijing’s top diplomat says
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi tells Council on Foreign Relations that US and China need to salvage their relationship: ‘A glass is easily broken, but difficult to repair’
Beijing’s top diplomat made a strongly worded and wide-ranging defence of China’s model of globalisation on Friday, calling US accusations that China was pursuing global hegemony a “serious strategic misjudgment” and appealing to both sides to salvage the two countries’ precarious relationship.
“A glass is easily broken, but difficult to repair,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York at the end of a week that saw US President Donald Trump significantly ramp up his rhetoric against China.
In a series of appearances at the United Nations, Trump accused Beijing of inflicting “abuse” on US workers who lost their jobs in the years after China joined the World Trade Organisation; threatened to escalate the trade war between the world’s two largest economies; and charged that China was trying to influence the US midterm elections.
Watch: China rebuffs Trump’s claim it is meddling in elections
In his response, Wang said it was natural that tension and suspicion would arise between countries with such different social systems and levels of development.
“What is important is how [those differences] are viewed, evaluated and handled,” he said.