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China and US must get along, Communist Party says on eve of national congress
- Common interests between the two countries outweigh their differences, party spokesman says
- ‘We don’t provoke, but we’re not afraid of provocation,’ he says
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China offered an apparently conciliatory message to the United States on Saturday, saying it did not believe that the two major powers would necessarily be locked in confrontation.
The assessment was delivered by a senior Communist Party official ahead of the opening of the party’s national congress, an event held every five years.
In a press conference before the congress gets under way on Sunday, deputy propaganda chief Sun Yeli said the most important thing in international relations in the next 50 years would be “a right way” for the US and China “to get along”.
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“China-US ties concern the world’s future, and whether [we] can handle relations with each other is the question of the century that both countries need to answer well,” Sun said.
“We have never believed in the so-called Thucydides Trap,” he said, referring to the theory that confrontation between a rising power and a dominant one is inevitable.
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“[We also] oppose the idea that ‘a strong country must seek hegemony’ and the mindset of zero-sum game thinking.
“We don’t provoke, but we’re not afraid of provocation.”
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