[Salon] US’s China strategy a path to confrontation, Beijing warns

[Chas Freeman <cwfresidence@gmail.com>]

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3179837/us-china-strategy-path-confrontation-beijing-warns?module=lead_hero_story&pgtype=homepage

May 31, 2022
US’s China strategy a path to confrontation, Beijing warns

Chinese foreign minister tells conference that Washington’s extreme anxiety is unwarranted
Henry Kissinger says the risk of conflict is growing as technology advances

The US strategy towards China has pushed the two powers into confrontation, threatening turmoil for other nations, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned on Tuesday

Wang said the US must choose the right course in its relations with China by abandoning its cold war mentality and managing differences between the two countries.

Addressing an online seminar looking at the role of former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger in improving China-US ties, Wang accused Washington of disrupting peace in the Taiwan Strait, and for deciding the two countries were rivals.

“The current atmosphere of China-US relations is very abnormal, and the extreme anxiety of the US is completely unnecessary,” the Chinese foreign ministry quoted Wang as saying.

“If the US blindly defines China-US relations in terms of great power competition and takes a ‘you lose, I win’ approach to policy, it will only push China and the US into confrontation and conflict, and push the world into division and turmoil.

“China-US relations are encountering more and more challenges, and the historical narrative of the relations has been distorted. The development direction is in danger of being further led astray.”

The seminar was held by the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs and attended by a number of veterans of China-US affairs, including Kissinger. According to Shanghai-based news portal The Paper, Kissinger said both China and the US need to launch dialogue and understand each other’s core concerns to avoid their confrontation from becoming a direct war. Kissinger said technological advances had increased the risk of conflict, and leaders of China and the US need to assume special responsibilities to seek coexistence.

Despite talks among their officials, tensions between China and the US show no sign of abating.

Last week on his first tour of Asia as US president, Joe Biden launched the Indo Pacific Economic Framework, a partnership that Beijing sees as another effort to contain China.

Biden also said the US would defend Taiwan militarily if it was under attack from mainland China. Beijing reacted angrily to the remarks, even though Biden and other US officials later appeared to walk back from the comments.

In addition, a US delegation led by US Senator Tammy Duckworth arrived in Taipei on Monday in a previously unannounced visit, triggering a protest from the Chinese embassy in Washington.

In his speech, Wang said if the US kept its move on Taiwan, it would fundamentally undermine peace across the Taiwan Strait.

“And it will eventually bring harm to the US itself,” he said. Former Chinese ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai told the seminar that cooperation was the only way ahead for the US, China and other countries in the region. He said the normalisation of China-US relations had played a key role in the region’s development over the decades, and reversing that progress would only trigger conflict and chaos.

Also at the seminar, Peking University international relations professor Wang Jisi said many Chinese business people wanted to invest in the US, but their plans were made difficult because of various restrictions.