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US-China relations: nations should be competitors not rivals, Beijing’s envoy to Washington says
- Regarding China as a ‘strategic rival and imaginary enemy would be a huge strategic misjudgment’, ambassador Cui Tiankai tells forum
- Countries must return to dialogue to repair damage caused during Donald Trump’s presidency, he says
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China’s ambassador says it would be a grave mistake for the United States to treat China as a strategic rival, as Beijing pushes to reset its strained relations with Washington.
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Speaking on Thursday at a virtual forum on China-US relations, Cui Tiankai said the two sides needed to return to dialogue, after their relationship during the Donald Trump administration had been pushed “down the precipice of confrontation”.
“We may have competition, but we don’t have to be rivals,” he said. “Taking China as a strategic rival and imaginary enemy would be a huge strategic misjudgment. To develop any policy on the basis of that would only lead to grave strategic mistakes.”
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Cui’s remarks at the forum, co-hosted by the Beijing-based Chinese People’s Association for Peace and Disarmament and the Atlanta-based Carter Centre, came as the new US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said America’s ties with China were “arguably” its most important.
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