Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng Photo:website of China Foreign Ministry

The fundamental reason for the deadlock in China-US relations is that some in the US always see China as an "imaginary enemy," Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng said during a meeting with US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on Monday morning, urging the US to change its misguided mindset toward China and its extremely risky China policy.

Xie met with the US envoy in North China's Tianjin Municipality amid increasingly tense bilateral ties fueled recently by the US' moves of imposing sanctions on several Chinese officials over Hong Kong and its groundless accusation that China is engaging in cyberattacks.

China has delivered two lists of major concerns to the US during Xie's meeting with Sherman.


In the lists, China asked the US to unconditionally lift visa restrictions on members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and their families, as well as on Chinese students and stop suppressing Chinese companies and hindering the development of the Confucius Institutes, Xie told the media after the meeting.

The US should stop labeling Chinese media as ''foreign missions'' and revoke the extradition of Meng Wanzhou, he said. 

Some people in the US have been bringing up the so-called "Pearl Harbor Moment" and "Sputnik Moment" in reference to the China-US conflicts. The aim of such metaphors is to demonize China as the "imaginary enemy" to divert Americans' attention away from their dissatisfactions with domestic politics, economy, and society, Xie said during the meeting. 

"Washington has been trying to contain China, thinking that will solve its problems as if the only way for the US to become great again is to contain China's development," Xie noted.

Xie also pointed out that the Chinese people can see that the US-claimed "competition, cooperation, and confrontation" policies are nothing but cover-ups for exerting pressure on China.  

"Confrontation and containment are the fundamentals, cooperation is for expedients, and competition is a trap of discourse. When the US needs China, cooperation is required; in areas where China has advantages, they cut off supply chains and impose sanctions," Xie said.

He went on to say that in order to suppress China, the US will not hesitate to start conflicts. "To settle whatever the US wants to settle, and to get whatever the US intends to have, it has been seeking unilateral benefits all along. How can there be such a rule where one does all the bad deeds but takes all the benefits?"

The so-called "rules-based international order" put forward by the US is a disguise that packages rules set up by a few Western countries. It is the US version of the "law of the jungle" where it abandons the widely accepted international law and trample on the international system, so that it can profit and bully others, Xie noted. 

In talking about human rights issues, Xie said that the US should handle its own problems first before pointing fingers at others. 

The US has no right to claim it's the representative of democracy and human rights when it has committed genocide against the indigenous people, left a death toll of over 620,000 people from ineffective COVID-19 response, and provoked wars globally using lies and its military forces.

Global Times