Ganging up on China ‘is doomed to fail’, Beijing’s ambassador tells India
- Without naming the Quad alliance or any of its members, Sun Weidong says India should opt for ‘strategic autonomy’ – while cooperating more with China
- Sun calls for cooperation on the pandemic, energy security, climate change and trade
Without naming the US-led Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or its members, Sun Weidong said any attempts to “gang up for containing and suppressing China” would “be doomed to fail”.
“It is worth noting that a few countries are going against the trend,” Sun told more than 100 representatives from business, culture and academic communities in India during a virtual meeting on Wednesday.
“Out of selfishness, they hold a zero-sum cold war mentality, vigorously seek closed and exclusive ideological ‘small cliques’ and military alliances targeting a third party, stoke arms races, tension, division and bloc confrontation, turn the Asia-Pacific into an arena of major powers’ game and destabilise the world,” he said, according to a transcript published on the embassy’s website.
“These activities will find no support and lead nowhere.”
India should “maintain its strategic autonomy and refrain from joining closed and exclusive ‘alliances’ or ‘quasi-alliances’ against each other”, Sun said.
During the summit in Washington last week, the four leaders of the United States, Australia, Japan and India repeated their commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific region “undaunted by coercion”, a thinly veiled criticism of China.