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US-China relations
ChinaDiplomacy

US views on China ‘gone seriously awry’, Chinese foreign minister warns during Pacific tour

  • Wang Yi’s comments follow top US diplomat Antony Blinken’s policy speech calling China the ‘most serious long-term’ threat to world order
  • The US is the ‘source of chaos’ for the global order and China does not wish to compete in a ‘vicious’ way, Wang asserts

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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi with Pacific Islands Forum secretary-general Henry Puna in Fiji’s capital city of Suva. Photo: AFP
Laura Zhou
Washington’s views on China and Sino-US relations have “gone seriously awry”, the Chinese foreign minister said, after his country was labelled by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken as the “most serious long-term” threat to world order.
Wang Yi also condemned what he called America’s “cold war mentality”, saying it is the US that “has actually become a source of chaos that shakes the current international order and an obstacle to the advancement of the democratisation of international relations”.

Wang’s remarks came in response to a speech by Blinken accusing China of undermining the global order and pledging to work more closely with US allies and other countries to counter Beijing’s influence.

02:09

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says China is undermining global order

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says China is undermining global order

Speaking during a visit to Fiji as part of his eight-nation tour of the South Pacific, Wang said the world was not the world the US portrayed and China was not the China the US imagined.

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“We want to tell the US side that Sino-US relations are not a zero-sum game designed by the US,” Wang said on Saturday, according to a readout released by the Chinese foreign ministry.

“[Washington should] first realise that unipolar hegemony is unpopular, group confrontation has no future, small yards and high walls are closed and regressive, and decoupling and cutting off supply is detrimental to people and themselves,” Wang said of Washington’s relations with Beijing.

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China was willing to compete with the US, but not in a “vicious” way, he said.

“We never give in to blackmail and coercion, and will firmly defend China’s sovereignty, security and development interests. Any suppression and containment will only make the Chinese people more united, and the Chinese have the backbone and ambition to do so.”

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