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US must treat other countries equally: Chinese FM
Wendy Sherman is visiting China to hold first face-to-face talks between Washington and Beijing in months as the two negotiate acrimonious ties.
China and the international community have the responsibility to teach the US a lesson on how to treat other countries equally, senior diplomat Wang Yi has said ahead of the visit of deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman to China beginning Sunday.
State councillor and foreign minister Wang made the remarks at the third round of China-Pakistan foreign ministers’ strategic dialogue with counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi held in Chengdu, southwest China’s Sichuan province on Friday.
Wang’s comment, according to Chinese official media, was in response to the US state department spokesperson Ned Price’s statement that Sherman’s discussions in China will be held from a “position of strength”.
“The US has always put pressure on others with its self-claimed strengths in a condescending manner,” Wang was quoted as saying in state media. “But I want to tell the US side that there is never a country that is superior to others, and there shouldn’t be one.”
If the US still hasn’t learned how to treat other countries equally, then China, together with the international community, has a responsibility to teach the US, Wang said.
Sharp focus will be on Sherman’s two-day visit and talks in Tianjin, a port city some 100km from Beijing.
This will be the first face-to-face talks between Washington and Beijing in months as the two negotiate acrimonious ties.
Ahead of her visit, US officials told reporters in Washington that Sherman will tell China that while Washington welcomes competition, it wants to ensure that ties do not veer into conflict. “She’s going to underscore that we do not want that stiff and sustained competition to veer into conflict,” a Reuters report from Washington quoted a senior US official as saying.
“The US wants to ensure that there are guardrails and parameters in place to responsibly manage the relationship,” the official said. “Everyone needs to play by the same rules and on a level playing field.”
Sherman’s talks with Chinese officials will take place in the backdrop of tension between the two countries over wide-ranging issues including alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet, Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong and US’s ties with self-ruled Taiwan, which China sees as interference in its internal matters.
Chinese President Xi Jinping had warned US counterpart Joe Biden that confrontation between China and the US will be disastrous for both countries and the world in their first phone call after the latter became president in January.
In a statement, the White House had then said the president had “underscored his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices, crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including towards Taiwan”.
A statement from China carried by the official news agency, Xinhua, quoted Xi as telling Biden that those issues were China’s internal affairs.
“The Taiwan question and issues relating to Hong Kong, Xinjiang, etc. are China’s internal affairs and concern China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the US side should respect China’s core interests and act prudently,” Xi told his American counterpart.
