Ministry slams US bill's take on China

China strongly objects to the "America COMPETES Act of 2022" recently passed by the United States House of Representatives, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Monday, adding that the China-related content in the act represents a cold-war, zero-sum-game mentality.

"It defames China's development path and its domestic and foreign policies, agitates strategic competition against China and makes irresponsible remarks on issues related to Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet," Zhao told reporters at a news briefing in Beijing.

China urged the US to view China and bilateral ties in an objective and rational way, delete the negative content about China, halt work on the bill and refrain from undermining the China-US relationship and bilateral cooperation in key fields, Zhao said.

The nearly 3,000-page act includes billions of dollars for the US semiconductor industry and new provisions to strengthen US relations with Taiwan, according to media reports.

"We have repeatedly said that how the US develops itself or enhances its competitiveness is its own business," Zhao said. "But the US should not make an issue out of China, still less use it as a pretext to meddle in China's domestic affairs and harm China's interests."

He said the act has once again exposed the hegemonic and bullying practices of the US and fundamentally runs counter to the trend of the times and people's shared aspiration for peace, development and cooperation.

"Eventually, it will only undermine the interests of the US," Zhao added.

In June, the US Senate passed the US Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, intended to boost the country's ability to compete with Chinese technology, a move criticized by the Foreign Ministry as hyping up the so-called China threat and perceiving China as an imaginary enemy.

Li Zheng, an assistant professor with the Institute of American Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times newspaper that the US Congress has, for some time, played a major role in the deterioration of China-US relations by forcing the US administration to take provocative actions against China through various means, and the latest act is just one example.

Li said the act passed by the US House and the one passed by the US Senate in June are expected to be integrated and might be signed into law as soon as next month.