Wang Yi: China will respond firmly to US acts of 'hegemony'

China will react firmly and rationally to peremptory US acts, China's State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in response to a recent attack against China by top American officials amid heightened tensions between the world's two largest economies.

Wang made his comments Tuesday during a phone call with his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, during which he accused the US of being blatant and unreasonable. Wang urged the two nations to engage in "rational communication" instead of letting a few anti-China elements overturn decades of successful exchanges and cooperation between the two powers.

"The US' reckless provocation of confrontation and division is out of touch with the reality that the interests of China and the United States are deeply integrated, and they are so out of sync with the common aspirations of people of all countries," said Wang.

"We, bearing in mind the common interests of the Chinese and American people and the people of the world, stand ready to strive to maintain the stability of China-US relations through equal communication and exchanges with the US side," he added.

China will take firm countermeasures against any egregious behaviors that undermine China's legitimate rights and interests, the foreign minister said, adding that "China doesn't stir up troubles and always exercises maximum restraint."

The bilateral relationship between China and the US has deteriorated considerably amid increasingly hostile standoffs between Beijing and Washington, culminating in the tit-for-tat forced closures of consulates in Houston and Chengdu in recent days.

Wang's remarks came a few days after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered harsh criticism of China's ruling party and its policies at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, the birthplace of a president famous for re-establishing Sino-US diplomatic ties.

Pompeo declared the "old paradigm of blind engagement with China" a failure and called on "the free world" to induce change in China.

Noting that the China-US relationship has become a source of concern for many in the international community, Wang said the fundamental reason for that is to support one political faction's campaign during the upcoming US presidential election.

"They have forsaken the most basic sense of propriety in interactions between countries and breached the very bottom line of international norms. Such behavior is stark power politics that can be captured by one word: hegemony," he added.

The Chinese foreign minister warned that Pompeo's remarks would cause ideological confrontations to resurface and pull the world into a new Cold War. Wang said he is concerned that the current US political atmosphere toward China will revive the era of McCarthyism.

"Should such conspiracy theories be allowed, not only will China-US relations fall into the abyss of confrontation, but the whole world will face a crisis of division, and mankind's future will be in peril," he said.

Wang called for the international community to jointly uphold solidarity and cooperation. All countries should resist "any unilateral or hegemonic act and safeguard world peace and development", he said.

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an opinion piece Saturday in The Washington Post that America's chief diplomat was "decidedly undiplomatic" and that Pompeo failed to suggest a coherent or viable path forward for managing a relationship that will define this era more than any other.

"Pompeo also sought to commit the United States to a path that is bound to fail," Haass wrote. "It is not within our power to determine China's future, much less transform it."

Ankit Panda, a writer, analyst and editor-at-large at The Diplomat, pointed out that the best way for the US to lead the "free world" is to serve as an exemplar in how it behaves internally, in how it treats its allies and partners around the world, and how it contributes to the global public good.

"To take just a handful of examples, it strains credulity that the administration that has shaken down democratic allies for cash and pulled funding for the World Health Organization in the middle of a global pandemic can be seen as the kind of exemplar that Pompeo would want," Panda wrote in a piece published Monday in the news magazine.