Chinese leader Xi Jinping led Chinese government officials in blaming the United States for struggles in his country, with the strident anti-U.S. rhetoric by China’s strongman quickly being echoed by his top deputy.
Xi made his remarks Monday as tensions have escalated between the U.S. and China following a Chinese spy balloon being shot down and as China ramps up its saber-rattling against the democratic nation of Taiwan. The U.S. has also repeatedly warned China against providing the Russians with lethal weaponry for the invasion of Ukraine as the “DragonBear” alliance between Beijing and Moscow strengthens.
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“Western countries — led by the U.S. — have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development,” Xi said during a Monday speech at the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
Chinese state-run media outlet Xinhua News said Xi claimed China’s economy had grown well in the past year and that China had “embarked on a new journey of building a modern socialist country in all respects.” But the Chinese leader “stressed the need to stay calm, maintain resolve, pursue progress while ensuring stability, take active steps, unite as one, and have the courage to fight as the country faces profound and complex changes in both the domestic and international landscape.”
Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, until recently China’s ambassador to the U.S., continued to push Xi’s frustrated tone toward the U.S. during a Tuesday press briefing.
Qin warned that “if the United States does not hit the brake but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing, and there will surely be conflict and confrontation.” The Chinese official contended there would be “catastrophic consequences” and said U.S. competition with China “is a reckless gamble with the stakes being the fundamental interests of the two peoples and even the future of humanity.”
The Chinese foreign minister attacked “hysterical neo-McCarthyism” and said China would “continue to follow the principles put forth” by Xi, telling the U.S. to “abandon the zero-sum Cold War mentality.”
President Joe Biden insisted last month that “we seek competition, not conflict, with China” and “we’re not looking for a new Cold War.”
Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin met at the start of the Beijing Winter Olympics in early February 2022 to announce a broad strategic partnership “without limits” amid Russia's military buildup on Ukraine's border. The Kremlin invasion happened a few weeks later, and Beijing has gone out of its way to support Putin with rhetoric echoing Russia’s justification for the invasion, with economic and financial support, and with the provision of, at minimum, nonlethal military aid.
Qin responded to a question from Russian state-run media outlet TASS on Tuesday, saying that “China and Russia have found a path of major-country relations featuring strategic trust and good neighborliness” and attacked the U.S. for seeing the alliance “through the lens of Cold War alliances.” He claimed that “with China and Russia working together, the world will have a driving force toward multipolarity and greater democracy in international relations, and global strategic balance and stability will be better ensured.”
Xi has declared it a top goal of his to “reunite” Taiwan with China, including potentially by force, and there are growing concerns from U.S. military leaders that China may be planning an invasion in the coming years.
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), the chairman of the newly formed House Select Committee on China, returned from a multiday trip to Taiwan last month after meeting with a host of Taiwanese political leaders, saying that Taiwan views Russia’s war in Ukraine as a fate that could await them if they don’t take the proper steps needed to defend their island nation from a potential Chinese invasion.
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Qin defended the DragonBear alliance in the context of Taiwan on Tuesday.
“The Taiwan question is the core of the core interests of China, the bedrock of the political foundation of China-US relations, and the first red line that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations,” Qin warned. “Why does the U.S. ask China not to provide weapons to Russia, while it keeps selling arms to Taiwan?”
U.S. Air Force Gen. Michael Minihan warned earlier this year that China may invade Taiwan as early as 2025. The Chinese government suspended its anti-drug efforts with the United States in August 2022 in retaliation for then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to visit Taiwan over the objections of the Chinese government.