China ratcheted up the rhetoric aimed at the Trump administration on Saturday, a day after the US president claimed that if it weren’t for him, “thousands of people would have been killed in Hong Kong”.
Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting with G20 foreign ministers in Japan, Chinese State Councillor Wang Yi lit into the US, accusing Washington of trying to hijack global trade and reestablish American hegemony which had been waning in an increasingly multi-polar world.
“The United States is broadly engaged in unilateralism and protectionism, and is damaging multilateralism and the multilateral trading system”, Wang said, on the way to branding the Trump administration “the world’s biggest destabilizing factor”.
In an apparent reference to restrictions placed on Huawei, Hikvision and a multitude of other Chinese companies and entities, Wang accused the US of bringing the apparatus of the state to bear on “legitimate businesses”, in the process leveling baseless charges against them. That, Wang assessed, is tantamount to “bullying”.
And he didn’t stop there. He also lambasted the US House and Senate for the Hong Kong bill, which Trump is expected to sign, even if he doesn’t want to. The US Congress, Wang said, is “crudely” interfering in China’s internal affairs in a nefarious effort to undermine “one country, two systems” and stoke instability in Hong Kong.
He also rolled out the reference to “certain politicians”, which is usually a thinly-veiled jab at Peter Navarro and other hardliners at 1600 Penn.
Finally, Wang made it clear that no man (or woman or country for that matter) is going to stop China’s rise and that the best path for other nations is cooperation.
“There is no way out for the zero-sum games of the United States”, he remarked. “Only win-win cooperation between China and the United States is the right path”.
His remarks – delivered in Nagoya, Japan, where the spat between Tokyo and Seoul cast a pall over the proceedings – come a day after Xi Jinping “explained” China’s position to a gathering of high profile names in Beijing.
China is “just trying to restore our place and role in the world rather than reliving the humiliating days of [the] semi-colonial and semi-feudal era”, he said.
Read more: Xi Respectfully Tells Kissinger, Other Visitors To Show Him Some Respect
