China won’t lose a new cold war because it’s not the Soviet Union, says ambassador to US

Name: China’s US envoy Qin Gang strikes conciliatory note on arrival in Washington
Uploaded: 2021-12-24T14:15:19.000Z
Duration: 2 min 20 s
Description: China’s US envoy Qin Gang strikes conciliatory note on arrival in Washington

Qin Gang tells press briefing that Beijing has learned from the fall of the USSR and will not suffer a similar fate

Ambassador says the interests of the world’s two leading powers are intertwined

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Taiwan has become the main potential factor that could plunge the US and China into conflict, Qin Gang said. Photo: Xinhua

Laura Zhou

Published: 10:15pm, 24 Dec 2021

China is not the Soviet Union and will not lose if there is a new cold war, Beijing’s ambassador to the United States has said.

Qin Gang also urged policymakers in the US to “cautiously” manage ties with Taiwan, which he said has become a major potential flashpoint. He also said that nuclear talks with the US are unlikely, because China’s arsenal does not “match” the size of America’s.

The comments were made during a press briefing on Monday and published by the Chinese embassy on Friday.

Qin, who took over as ambassador in July, asked: “Why is there a sense of a new cold war making a comeback? It is because some people in the US harbour a cold war mentality and treat China like the former Soviet Union.

“But China is not the former Soviet Union, and the US is not the US of 30 years ago, and the interests of the two countries are closely intertwined.”

02:20

China’s US envoy Qin Gang strikes conciliatory note on arrival in Washington

China had been studying why the Soviet Union collapsed and had drawn lessons from that, Qin argued, adding that the Chinese Communist Party was not like its “rigid” Soviet counterpart.