“Have a right understanding of China,” demanded Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin during a December 4, 2023 press briefing.
It seems that some people in the U.S. government, such as Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, regard China as a threat, “the biggest threat we’ve ever had. China is not our friend.” But, says Wang, this contradicts President Biden’s statement that the U.S. “is not seeking to halt China’s economic development or scientific and technological progress.”
Wang said that the contrary remarks of U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo “will hardly win the trust from China and the rest of the world, and reveals the deep-seated Cold-War mentality and hegemonic mindset of some in the U.S. China never bets against the U.S., and has no intention to challenge or unseat it. The U.S. needs to have a right understanding of China, work with China to earnestly deliver on the important common understandings reached between the two presidents in their meeting in San Francisco, stop viewing China as an enemy, correct the wrong move of carrying out major-country confrontation under the pretext of competition, and avoid saying one thing and doing another.”
If Biden and Raimondo disagree about whether China is a threat to the United States—and it’s not obvious that they do disagree on that level of generality—they should get together and confer until Biden does recognize that China is a threat.
To be sure, it’s very annoying when some people say one thing and others say another thing, in the U.S. government and elsewhere. This is far from the practice of the propagandist-diplomats of the People’s Republic of China, who speak as with one resolute hive mind about the advisability of having a right understanding, earnestly delivering on common understandings, correcting the wrong move, and so forth.
But contra Wang, China does often say one thing and do another.
By implying otherwise, that the Chinese government is the honest and consistent institution correcting the dishonest and contradictory one, Wang displays a wrong understanding. Both governments—or, let’s say, their officials—often say one thing yet do another. China’s dishonesty is worse, though, because what China is lying about is often so much worse than what the U.S. government is lying about, even though the worst crimes of the latter are hardly few or minor.
Wang was referring to the benighted mid-November summit meeting in San Francisco between our decrepit China-appeasing leader, U.S. President Joe Biden, and guileful China Dictator Xi Jinping.
The common understanding reached in San Francisco was that the U.S. would make concessions and China would accept them. The main product of the high-level negotiations revealed to the public was Xi’s reiteration of an already-broken promise that China would help curb the flow of fentanyl to the United States, a non-concession, empty, meaningless; in return for which Biden removed U.S. sanctions against a Chinese police institute complicit in the Uyghur genocide.
If this does not seem like a reasonable trade to you, China would like to point out that you have a wrong understanding.
Also see:
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin’s Regular Press Conference on December 4, 2023”
