Cui: China not looking to rule world

China has never made it a national strategy to replace any other country, and it opposes dividing countries into different camps, Beijing's top envoy in Washington said on Thursday, hours after US President Joe Biden said the East Asian nation aims to be "the most powerful" in the world.

Biden, in his first White House news conference, said China has an "overall goal to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world".

Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai said:"Our goal is to meet the growing aspiration of the Chinese people for a better life. Our goal is not to compete with or replace any other country."

"This is never our national strategy. Hopefully, people could have a better understanding of this," he said when asked by CNN's Christiane Amanpour to comment on Biden's remarks.

China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily briefing in Beijing on Friday that "China's goal has never been to surpass the US, but to consistently surpass itself and become a better China".

She said that China's attitude toward China-US relations is clear and consistent. China hopes that the US will work with China to handle bilateral relations following the principles of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation, to ensure that bilateral relations move forward on a healthy and stable track.

Biden also said that the US is "not looking for confrontation" with China, but there will be "steep competition" and insisted China play by the international rules such as fair competition, and that the US would reestablish its alliances, an effort he said he had told Chinese President Xi Jinping is "not anti-Chinese".

Cui said that what today's world wants, and tomorrow's world would want is to join efforts by all countries to build a community of nations for a shared future.

"We don't think any attempt to divide the world into different camps or even build confrontational military blocs, we don't think this kind of approach is a solution. Actually, this is a problem in itself," he said.

Such an attempt will not help the world in dealing with myriad challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, poverty, terrorism and building a more open, inclusive and sharing global economy, according to the envoy.

"So we believe our future lies in the joint efforts to build such a global community, not to divide the world into different camps," he said.

Cui, who was a member of the Chinese delegation to have a dialogue with leading US diplomats in Anchorage, Alaska, last week, said the meeting was "timely" and "helpful" in terms of enhancing mutual understanding.

"I hope this will be the beginning of a long process of dialogue, communication and hopefully coordination between the two sides," he said.