China-US relations: Beijing lays out bottom lines, ‘has no plans to unseat superpower’
- Foreign Minister Wang Yi offers first major response to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech last month describing engagement with China as a failure
- Beijing could be looking beyond the presidential election to the next American administration, analyst says
Wang’s remarks were Beijing’s first comprehensive response to Pompeo’s address at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library on July 23 when he took aim at the Communist Party and declared that the US’ engagement with China was a failure.
In the interview, Wang rejected Pompeo’s criticism but also warned that China-US ties were “facing the gravest challenge” in more than four decades.
He said Beijing rejected any attempt to create a new Cold War or revive McCarthyism. Instead, it stood ready to restart dialogue with Washington at all levels to ease the tensions and to “put in place a clear-cut framework” in the relationship, he said.
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“Today’s China is not the former Soviet Union. We have no intention of becoming another United States. China does not export ideology and never interferes in other countries’ internal affairs,” Wang said.