China’s new foreign minister on Tuesday warned Beijing and Washington are headed for “conflict and confrontation” if the US doesn’t change course on its military buildup in the Asia Pacific and other policies aimed at China.
“If the United States does not hit the brake, but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing, and there surely will be conflict and confrontation,” Foreign Minister Qin Gang told reporters.
“Who will bear the catastrophic consequences? Such competition is a reckless gamble with the stakes being the fundamental interests of the two peoples and even the future of humanity,” he added.
Qin’s comments came a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping offered rare direct criticism of the US in a speech. “Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-around containment, encirclement and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development,” Xi said.
Qin echoed Xi’s comments when he discussed the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, which calls for the US to build up its military and diplomatic presence in the region to counter China. He said the strategy is “an attempt to gang up to form exclusive blocs, to provoke confrontation by plotting an Asia-Pacific version of NATO, and to undermine regional integration through decoupling and cutting chains.”
He warned US efforts to build alliances in the region could lead to a conflict similar to the war in Ukraine. “No Cold War should be reignited, and no Ukraine-style crisis should be repeated in Asia,” Qin said.
In his new post, Qin is junior to Wang Yi, the Communist Party’s top foreign policy official, Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s counterpart. But Qin is still in a very influential position and took his post after serving as the Chinese ambassador in Washington.
During his time in the US, Qin also warned of a conflict between the US and China due to the US taking steps to increase cooperation with Taiwan. But he also brought a message of good relations and stressed on Tuesday that Beijing wants to get on a better track with Washington.
“China will continue to follow the principles put forth by President Xi Jinping, namely, mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, to pursue a sound and stable relationship with the United States. We hope the US government will listen to the calls of the two peoples,” Qin said.
Regarding Taiwan, Qin said the issue is the first “red line that must never be crossed,” repeating something Xi told President Biden when they met in Indonesia in November. The US has not heeded the Chinese warning and continues to take steps to increase military and political support for Taiwan even though Beijing is responding by increasing military pressure on the island.
Overall, the Biden administration has shown little interest in cooling tensions with China and frames its engagement with Chinese officials as a “managing of competition” rather than an effort to resolve issues.
D-I-P-L-O-M-A-C-Y?
Yeah, that statement just came right out of thin air. Never mind Wash. is sending warplanes and ships to provoke war with China. Where are the Chinese ships, planes and bases around the USA?
Yeah, that statement just came right out of thin air. Never mind Wash. is sending warplanes and ships to provoke war with China. Where are the Chinese ships, planes and bases around the USA?
I suspect US wants to push back China by about 30 years or so. It’s a pie in the sky dream of course, but I understand why they want to try.
The way we are going there may not be a US in thirty years.
“US efforts to build alliances in the region could lead to a conflict similar to the war in Ukraine” – it is a global conflict. Ukraine is only a part of it. The alliances are created a long time ago. American military bases in Japan and South Korea were created not only against USSR but also against China and any country which could represent a potential threat to the hegemony of American oligarchy. It is more appropriate to talk about the escalation and about the consolidation of the alliances. Maybe India can sit on the fence for awhile but China can’t. China is the main threat to American imperialism.
Your statement is true and the Chinese are concerned as they should be. The US can not or will not change direction to cut the Military Budget, It is the only salvation for Capitalism.
The militarism is the only salvation for the imperialism. The capitalism, as we see, is leading to the oligarchy political system. American oligarchy is dominated by MIC, that is the problem. We don’t know how far American MIC will go into the gambling. They are not crazy, and, probably, when they realize that there are no chance for them to reach the global dominance, they will change the course.
The king of the hill is tottering,knows it and understands its time is almost over so it does what it knows;bullying
Grade B checker players are engaging Chinese, Russian and Iranian chess masters in world war three,
Iran has shunned nuclear terrorism on moral grounds. China and Russia armed themselves in defense against European and American colonialism yet know quite clearly nuclear winter, peeling away flesh and blue human jellyfish babies follow nuclear war.
Nonaligned nations have increased trade with Russia, which is holding European and American barbarians at bay with conventional weapons.
China will keep building military strength while carefully watching for a first sign of Russian weakness on the western front. Russia is draining European and American will to fight using conventional weapons. China and Iran will be too expensive for US aggressors to deal with using conventional war.
White Americans and Europeans are as violent as Israelis; neither population can think as normal humans. Everyone is walking on eggshells.
Diplomacy is dead.
Don’t give up entirely JC4P. If diplomacy hasn’t been nuked, there is still some hope…
Qing was China’s ambassador to the US before being promoted to FM. Biden and Blinken didn’t even bother to meet with him a single time all this time he was in Washington. He tried to bring good will and was met with a stone wall and a mountain of anti-China rhetoric. So now we are reaping what we sowed with a Chinese FM who has been shaped into an American hawk by his time here…
I just want to go a single week without some kind of China threat inflation article in MSM but I still haven’t had the pleasure. Every day the China hawks just try to ramp up another war while our own people die trying to get medical help in Mexico…
Trump was also loaded with anti-China rhetoric, tariffs.
It is important to remember that this man’s last job was Ambassador to the US. It is also important to remember that we treated him with open disrespect, and frequently refused even to meet with him. Shades of provoking war in Ukraine.
He knows us, our language, our thinking. And he has reason to express these fears for our course.
China will have to make a choice invade Taiwan now or wait until the yanks ram Taiwan with weapons making it harder to take Taiwan , IMO China should go NOW.
Or it could decide not to invade another country. Believe it or not, that’s one of the options.
They can blockade it and blow up the us ships coming to break the blockades. China will do nothing unless Taiwan declares independence and the Taiwanese leadership r not corrupt enough to play with the fate of Taiwan for us money in their pockets
Taiwan doesn’t need to “declare” independence since it’s been independent of mainland regimes since 1895.
The PRC could indeed blockade Taiwan and blow up one US ship coming to break the blockade. After which the PLA navy, and probably several mainland coastal ports, would cease to exist. Whatever one thinks of Xi, few people probably think he’s stupid.
Many in Taiwan want a return to the Japanese Regime.
Everyone in China is ok with current status quo afaik, with slow and steady progress towards reintegration through peaceful means. But it is us that is looking to make Taiwan into Chinese Ukraine and Taiwan declaring independence will lead to China moving in on Taiwan. Century of humiliation is deeply traumatic for them and they cannot and will not allow a formal declaration of independence go unanswered. I have no military background and don’t have much idea of military tech but afaik China can do the same to Guam and other first island chain bases and any us fleet coming in within their defensive shield. China isn’t Iraq or Serbia.
That’s a key and underappreciated point about the century of humiliation. China is absolutely done with the foreign white devil business, and it’s solidly in the 21st century now, with 1.4 billion people and greater production capacity than the US. Americans have no clue what they’re allowing their politicians to poke.
Australians found out when China started poking back Australia took some very big hits in economic terms leading to the ouster of their pm. Trouble is this is the indispensable nation and not Australia and by the time some new status quo is reached the world will be in ruins.
Yeah, the new status quo will be the background radiation count. Personally I’m OK with the Chinese having a substantial influence in Asia, what with them being 1.4 billion people who are actually there, and I’m similarly comfortable with China having a substantial presence in the Sea of China.
“Mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation” … is there some reason US officials can’t use a phrase like that? Would their heads explode?
“Would their heads explode?” Hmmm.
my head already hurts and i already use all of those those words
Just a figure of speech.
“Explode?” They LOVE the word “explode”. All over the world. YeeHaww!
Probably,that kind of language is not their cup of tea.
“Who will bear the catastrophic consequences?”
the american people (who continue to pay their federal taxes) will ultimately “bear the catastrophic consequences”
idiots
American people are strangely disinterested. They do not want to know. All any self-satisfied Biden supporting American needs to do is go and visit any public school in well-to do Washington suburbs. There he will find an utter chais, wild children out of control, entitled and disrespectful. Roaming halls st will, vandalizing all in sight. Teacher cannot say a thing. ‘and management carefully selected to aliw mayhem. It is mismanagement of the highest order, dumb managers are in demand. Thise liok at paperwork and debate “strategies” while mayhem rules in hallways,
Just one example of blundness, One simple example of deluberate destruction of education system, by not setting any standards or examples of good behaviour.
Where is the mismanagement in corporations heading? In governments on all levels? In can ser private sector loving it — dealing with dunmmues to sell them what they do not need. It is just a plunder of oublic property wherever you look. And wars are splendid opportunuties to sell, sell, sell.
No wonder people are just puting heads in the sand,