Washington rips off its mask and reveals its true intent: China Daily editorial

The United States Strategic Approach to the People's Republic of China unveiled by the White House on Wednesday, although nothing new, laid bare, that to respond to what it sees as "Beijing's challenge", the US administration has adopted a "competitive approach" to China.

Although it claims that the approach "is not premised on determining a particular end state" for the country, it quite clearly is.

And although speeches delivered by senior US officials, including Vice-President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, had already made clear that Washington has become increasingly anxious as China has moved closer to the center of the world stage, the approach it has laid out removes the mask, revealing that it is now going all-out to sabotage the rise of China, as the US has done to others previously.

Ranging from its trade frictions with China and its barefaced containment of China's technology companies — on Friday, the US blacklisted another 33 Chinese entities — to its increasingly bold interference with China's internal affairs, it makes clear that in the eyes of Washington everything exists simply to serve the US, and that Beijing should be subordinate to it.

The White House claims that its actions are because China is not "citizen-centric", which is particularly ironic given that as the pandemic has exposed so clearly that Washington serves America Inc. at the expense of the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Americans.

As Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Sunday at a news conference on the sidelines of the annual national legislative session in Beijing: "Unfortunately, in addition to the ravages of the new coronavirus, there is also a political virus spreading in the United States. This political virus is to use every opportunity to attack and smear China. Some politicians ignore the most basic facts, make up too many lies and plot too many plots against China."

It is because China has not become "US-centric" that Washington is trying to discredit the country with propaganda and false narratives that portray Beijing as an evil actor with malevolent intentions, a ploy that US strategists believe was successful in bringing about the demise of the Soviet Union.

The document even goes so far as to proclaim that the US bid to start an arms race is to deter Beijing from using its "weapons of mass destruction", a charge we have heard before from Washington in relation to another country — it seems that Washington is not one to learn from past mistakes.

By adhering to its own "socialist path with Chinese characteristics", China has achieved remarkable growth and development, which it seems is intolerable to the US, as a result, as Wang said, some political forces in the US are trying to take China-US relations hostage, and push the two countries to the brink of a new Cold War.

While China has promised its own people a better future, it has never promised to the US that it will sacrifice its autonomy, and use reform and opening-up to become a US-like and liked country.

The US has benefited tremendously from its engagement with China over the past more than 40 years, and China too has benefited from that engagement. But the US has not played the role of noble benefactor as it condescendingly claims. It is mainly the lure of profits that has attracted US companies and investors to China, not the desire that China will become what the US administration wants it to be.

China and the US both gain from cooperation. If US decision-makers continue to misjudge the situation, and embrace a Cold War mentality, it will not only harm China's interests, but also those of the US, as China will unswervingly defend its sovereignty, security and development interests.

It is the US' loss of confidence in itself that has awakened the demon in its hearts, not China.

It is natural that there should be different interpretations of whether China's actions are right or wrong, but in trying to ascribe malign values to them in the way it is, the US is trying to deny the fundamental changes that are taking place as the world moves toward multipolarity and democratization.

The US may be the world's sole superpower but it is no match for time.

As Wang said, those who always seek to label China hegemonic are precisely the ones who refuse to let go of hegemony themselves.