Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi assured Friday (December 18th) that Beijing was ready to cooperate with US President-elect Joe Biden on several priorities, but warned Washington against
anti-China
“
McCarthyism
”.
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After months of direct confrontation with the government of outgoing President Donald Trump, he said he hoped for a return to dialogue and a climate of "
mutual trust
" between the two leading world economic powers after the alternation of January 20.
"
It is important that US policy towards China returns to objectivity and reason as soon as possible
," Wang Yi said in a virtual speech to the Asia Society, a New York think tank.
He assured that China believed that there was a "
possibility of cooperation
" on several priorities of the future Biden administration: the fight against the pandemic, the economic crisis and climate change.
"
We hope to be able to broaden cooperation and manage our differences through dialogue,
”he insisted.
The Trump administration has decreed decades of dialogue with Beijing in recent months, and has engaged in an all-out showdown.
US Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo, a hawk on the front lines in this New Cold War-style confrontation, has ended Chinese-funded cultural exchange programs and drastically tightened the rules for granting visas to the Chinese.
With increasingly ideological overtones in his accusations against the Chinese Communist Party, he spoke of a struggle between “
freedom
” and “
tyranny
” and called on American universities to be wary of Chinese students.
"
We are witnessing a McCarthyism which resurfaces and endangers normal international trade
," lamented Wang Yi, referring to the witch hunt against the Communists carried out in the United States by Republican Senator Joe McCarthy after World War II.
The Chinese minister accused American officials, without naming them, of practicing "
an irresponsible presumption of guilt
" towards China.
"
They ignore our many common interests and the margin of cooperation between our two countries, insisting that China is a major threat
," he regretted.
Joe Biden has promised to be firm with Beijing, espousing growing hostility in the American political class, but also to seek some cooperation in the face of planetary challenges.