Foreign Ministry responds to Pence speech, stresses non-interference

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Friday that it was “ridiculous” for Washington to characterize its regular exchanges with China as interference after US Vice-President Mike Pence had accused Beijing of meddling in American politics.

“It is very ridiculous for the US side to stigmatize its normal exchanges and cooperation with China as China interfering in its internal affairs and elections,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said in a statement.

“China always follows the principle of non-interference in others’ internal affairs, and we have no interest in meddling in US internal affairs and elections,” Hua said.

“The international community has already known fully well who wantonly infringes upon others’ sovereignty, interferes in others’ internal affairs and undermines others’ interests. Any malicious slander on China is futile,” the statement said.

“The relevant speech (by Pence) made unwarranted accusations against China’s domestic and foreign policies and slandered China by claiming that China meddles in US internal affairs and elections,” Hua said.

“This is nothing but speaking on hearsay evidence, confusing right and wrong and creating something out of thin air. The Chinese side is firmly opposed to it,” she said.

In Washington on Thursday, Pence said China was using “wedge issues” such as tariffs to advance its political influence in the US and globally. He accused China of seeking to sway the US midterm elections on Nov 6 against Trump, in retaliation for his trade policies against Beijing.

“To put it bluntly, President Trump’s leadership is working; China wants a different American president,” Pence said in a speech at the Hudson Institute, a conservative Washington think tank.

Hua said China’s policy toward the US is “consistent and clear-cut”.

“We are committed to joining hands with the US to work for non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation,” she said.

“We urge the US to correct its wrongdoing, stop groundlessly accusing and slandering China and harming China’s interests and China-US ties, and take concrete actions to maintain the sound and steady development of China-US relations,” she added.

Pence also credited the US for China’s rapid development, saying that China has become the second-largest economy in the world.

“Much of this success was driven by American investment in China,” he said.

Hua said China’s development is mainly owed to the Chinese people’s hard work and its mutually beneficial cooperation with countries around the world.

Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador to the US, said China wants to end the trade war, but the US position keeps changing “so we don’t know exactly what the US would want as priorities’’.

“We are ready to make a deal. We are ready to make some compromise, but it needs the goodwill from both sides,” Cui said in an interview with National Public Radio on Wednesday.

Cui said that he is not seeing sufficient goodwill from the US side.

“We offered to reduce the trade deficit of the United States, for instance. And we also presented a very good proposal to the US side about the further reform and opening-up in China, some of the so-called structural issues,” he said.

“Then I think more than once we had some tentative agreement between the two working teams. Then just overnight the tentative agreement was rejected, and the demand from the US changed. So this is very confusing, and this is making things very difficult,” he said.

Cui also spoke about the South China Sea.

“We have sovereignty over many of the islands in the South China Sea. And this has been a long-standing position of China,” he said.

Cui said that at the end of World War II, the then-Chinese government, with the help of American naval ships, took back the islands from Japan.

“It was American naval ships that sent Chinese troops to take back these islands from Japan. So we have a long-standing sovereignty over these islands, but we are also aware there are some territorial disputes,” Cui said.

“And now we’re ready to work with other countries to have negotiations to have a final solution to such disputes,’’ he said. “We understand this will take a long time, but in the meantime it is our intention to maintain stability there. That’s why we are working on a code of conduct with the ASEAN countries.”

“Before we are able to solve the territorial disputes, we should work together to maintain stability, to try to engage in some joint development of resources there, to keep a good order in the region,” Cui said. “So I just hope that the United States will join our efforts, will be helpful, not try to disrupt the process towards peaceful negotiations.”

When asked about recent news reports that the Trump administration was considering banning Chinese students from American universities, Cui said that if that were true, it is “a very dangerous situation, because so many Chinese students are studying here, and a growing number of American students are studying in China”.

Cui also mentioned that a few years ago The Children’s Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana, hosted a Chinese cultural event that was a great success.

“I was invited to address the opening ceremony, and I had a meeting with then-Governor Mike Pence. Pence was a great supporter of such people-to-people intercultural exchanges,” Cui said. “And the local people, they were so enthusiastic about such cultural events. So why should we cut off all these ties, all these natural ties between the two peoples?

“I think between any two countries, maybe especially between China and the US, there is a certain degree of competition,” he said. “This is only natural. But there’s also a much larger need for cooperation. We have to cooperate whether we like it or not.”

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