China-US tension: senior Chinese official urges renewed talks to avoid relations getting ‘out of control’

Long commentary by the foreign ministry vice-minister calling for dialogue is a departure from Wolf Warrior rhetoric

But Le Yucheng said there was ‘no room for compromise’ on territorial sovereignty issues

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Le Yucheng, vice-minister of foreign affairs, has written an article dismissing “some politicians in the US” for their provocative actions and for “maliciously attacking” the Communist Party and China’s political system. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 6:00pm, 7 Sep 2020Updated: 11:31pm, 7 Sep 2020

A senior Chinese foreign ministry official has urged China and the United States to resume dialogue to prevent relations from spinning out of control after plunging to their lowest level in decades.

Le Yucheng, vice-minister of foreign affairs, penned a nearly 4,000-character piece in the Communist Party mouthpiece, People’s Daily, on Monday to call for a security dialogue to prevent strategic misjudgments between the countries, as well as exchanges between their think tanks and media.

“We should restore and restart dialogue mechanisms at all levels and across all areas to bring our problems to the negotiating table,” he wrote. “Through the establishment of various mechanisms, we can effectively manage risks to ensure China-US relations do not get out of control and become derailed.”

Le’s long commentary reflected a step back from the heated rhetoric of China’s Wolf Warrior diplomats. However, it continued to cast deteriorating relations between the major powers as entirely the fault of the US.

The piece also sought to rebut the bipartisan consensus in Washington on the failures of the decades-long policy of engagement with Beijing – seen as having failed to liberalise or even democratise China – with a plea to return to realms of cooperation between the two.

Tensions and rhetoric between China and the US have escalated in recent months on multiple fronts, sparking fears of an elevated risk of military conflict between the nuclear-armed powers.

US defence secretary Mark Esper argued in an August 24 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal titled “The Pentagon is prepared for China” that the increasingly modernised Chinese military would threaten the “free and open international system”.