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The Trump administration has stated that decades of America’s engagement with China have failed, speaking of a global challenge from Beijing through its alleged rampant theft of intellectual property, espionage and its bombing of infrastructure projects around the world.
FILE: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi greets journalists as he arrives for the press conference of the National People’s Congress in Beijing on March 8, 2019. Image: AFP
WASHINGTON – China’s top diplomat offered his cooperation on President-elect Joe Biden’s key priorities on Friday, warning that Beijing’s many American critics were creating an atmosphere of “McCarthyism” and ignoring common interests.
Pointing to President Donald Trump’s aggressive approach, Foreign Minister Wang Yi expressed hope that talks and “mutual trust” between the world’s two largest economic powers will resume after Biden takes office on 20 May. January.
“It is important that the US policy towards China returns to objectivity and sensitivity as soon as possible,” Wang said in a virtual address to the New York-based Asia Society.
Wang said China saw “room for cooperation” with Biden on three of the four issues it has identified as immediate priorities: COVID-19, economic recovery and climate change. Biden’s stated fourth priority is racial equity.
On the pandemic, Wang said China was willing to help the United States, including through continued production of face masks, and said that Beijing and Washington could cooperate in making vaccines and helping third countries.
“We hope to expand cooperation and manage differences through dialogue,” Wang said.
The Trump administration has stated that decades of America’s engagement with China have failed, speaking of a global challenge from Beijing through its alleged rampant theft of intellectual property, espionage and its bombing of infrastructure projects around the world.
In recent months, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ended China-funded exchange programs for Americans and tightened visa rules for Chinese students, as well as Communist Party members and their families, likely affecting hundreds of millions of people.
“We see McCarthyism resurface and jeopardize normal international exchanges,” Wang said, referring to the witch hunt by communists allegedly in the US government led by Republican Senator Joe McCarthy after World War II.
Wang accused unidentified senior US officials of “irresponsible presumption of guilt and emotional onslaught.”
“They ignore the vast common interests and the space for cooperation between the two countries and insist that China is the main threat,” Wang said.
“This is like misaligning buttons on clothes. They are wrong from the beginning.”
Biden, who invested significant time in diplomacy with China as vice president, has generally agreed that Beijing represents a global challenge.
But he is expected to take a less bellicose tone than Trump, with his candidate for secretary of state Antony Blinken talking about possible cooperation on climate change and the pandemic.
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