Save articles for later
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.
Delphi, Greece: The United States’ attempts to soften the tone on its relations with China have failed to impress China’s top envoy in Greece, who accused the Biden administration of pursuing a “crazy” strategy” of trying to suppress the Asian superpower.
Amid heightened tensions between the strategic rivals, Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan gave a speech to the Brookings Institute in which he tried to reassure China that the US was not seeking to decouple its economy from China’s.
China’s Ambassador to Greece Xiao Junzheng speaking to the Delphi Economic Forum in Delphi, Greece on Friday 28 April, 2023.Credit: Latika Bourke
Sullivan said that the US was focused on shoring up its supply-chain resilience and that it sought to create partnerships with countries to produce sensitive technologies like semiconductors.
His speech came just a week after US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made similar remarks, saying that the US was following a strategy of “friendshoring” on sensitive industries but not decoupling.
But the softer tone being struck by the Biden administration appeared to have failed to sway the Chinese.
Responding to Sullivan’s speech at the Delphi Economic Forum in the ancient city, northwest of Athens, China’s Ambassador in Greece, Xiao Junzheng, said the US was trying to suppress China’s future and that it would not work.
“The US is trying to draw a line for Chinese future development,” Xiao said.
“From the American point of view, China should confine itself to the low-value added industrial goods providing the US with cheap and primary products while staying away from high-tech industries, especially from those sectors which might threaten US supremacy.
“Is it fair? America wants to dictate its economic peace terms to China but how crazy and how astoundingly short-sighted this is?
“Using geopolitics to suppress market principles might be effective for a while but not for long, nor will it last forever.”
US National security adviser Jake Sullivan.Credit: AP
He said China’s value-system was based around getting to know themselves by their friends compared to the Americans knowing themselves by defining their enemies and weaponsising morality and values to punish “whoever does not obey.”
“If you need the help or the contribution from China I think the best thing for us to do is give the relevant respect to Chinese civilisation,” he said.
“We cannot imagine that China, from the American point of view, on the one hand, would just suppress you, economically, and technologically, on the other hand, you should coordinate with me to lessen my burdens on the important or sensitive topics.
“It’s very difficult, it would be very difficult,” he warned.
But under questioning, Xiao said: “When we touch on the sensitive topics we need the respect and the equal treatment from the US, so actually China remains committed to its responsibility on lots of global issues, like climate change, like the war against terrorism.”
And in a nod to the setting of the international gathering, he invoked the motto coined 2500 years ago by the Greek philosopher Diogenes
“Regarding the topic of the US decoupling from China, let me repeat this motto: ‘Step aside, do not block my sunlight.’”
He took aim at the US for allowing political polarisation and inequality to grow in its society, claiming that China, by contrast, was raising its middle class with “common prosperity”.
He added that any country whose GDP reached or exceeded even 6 per cent of the US should “be careful.”
“This country will be regarded by the US as a threat to its national interests and its supremacy and this country will become the target of the US economic suppression,” he said.
The reporter travelled to Delphi as a guest of the Delphi Economic Forum.
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.
Most Viewed in World
From our partners
Source: Read Full Article
