China has no intention to ‘challenge or unseat’ Washington, says official

Beijing, Dec 4: China on Monday said it never bets against the US, and has no intention to “challenge or unseat” it, after a senior US official described Beijing as the “biggest threat” and “not our friend”, weeks after the summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his American counterpart Joe Biden.
Speaking at an annual national defence forum in Simi Valley in California, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo asked lawmakers, Silicon Valley and US allies to stop China from getting semiconductors and cutting-edge technologies key to national security.
She said China is “the biggest threat we’ve ever had” and stressed that “China is not our friend”.
Raimondo said, “Every day China wakes up trying to figure out how to do an end run around our export controls… which means every minute of every day, we have to wake up tightening those controls and being more serious about enforcement with our allies.”
Reacting to her comments, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Monday that Biden once noted that the US is not seeking to halt China’s economic development or scientific and technological progress.
“However, the remarks of the US official contradict this. It 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 US,” he said.
“China never bets against the US, and has no intention to challenge or unseat it,” he said.
“The US 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,” he said.
Biden and Xi had a fruitful summit on November 15 during which they agreed to bring down the tensions between the two countries, also the world’s two top economies. (PTI)