(Beijing) China said on Wednesday it will “firmly” defend its interests, while urging the United States not to just view bilateral relations as confrontational, after remarks a few hours earlier from Joe Biden.
The American president was speaking during his traditional “State of the Union” address. A long-awaited intervention after the episode of the Chinese balloon which flew over American territory before being shot down last weekend.
America “will act” if Beijing “threatens its sovereignty”, warned Joe Biden.
“Winning the competition with China should unite us all,” he told the US Congress, saying he was determined, however, “to work with China where it can serve American interests and benefit the whole world”.
Asked Wednesday about Joe Biden’s remarks, Chinese diplomacy was both firm and open to dialogue.
“We will firmly uphold China’s sovereignty, security and development interests,” Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a regular press briefing.
“The United States should view China objectively and rationally, pursue a positive and pragmatic policy towards it, and work with it to put bilateral relations back on the path of healthy and stable development.” »
Bilateral relations deteriorated further last year over Taiwan, human rights in China’s Xinjiang region and US restrictions on semiconductor exports, which aim to curb Chinese development in this area. domain.
“China does not seek to avoid competition with the United States and it does not fear it, but we are opposed to the whole of the Sino-American relationship being defined by this notion of competition alone”, underlined Mao Ning.
“Slandering a country in the name of competition, restricting the legitimate development rights of other countries, or harming industrial chains and global supply chains, all of these are not behaviors worthy of a responsible major country. . »
The US military shot down on Saturday, off the coast of South Carolina, a Chinese balloon considered by the Pentagon to be a spy device, intended to collect sensitive information.
Beijing argued for its part that it was a civilian aerostat, mainly intended to collect meteorological data.