China: ‘Radical’ Trump administration building ‘new Iron Curtain’
President Trump’s administration is a “radical” group bent on provoking “a second Cold War” with Beijing, a senior Chinese diplomat argued while attempting to woo European powers. “In modern history, the progress of human civilization has been halted several times by radical forces,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the French Institute of International Relations in Paris. “What we are seeing now is that some are again maneuvering to draw a new Iron Curtain, erect another Berlin Wall, and start a second Cold War. The China-U.S. relationship is in its most testing time since the establishment of diplomatic relations.” The Chinese envoy offered that denunciation to cap a week of overtures to European nations, a diplomatic swing that came on the heels of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s most recent round of warnings about the threats posed by Chinese espionage and economic influence. Wang called attention to disputes between U.S. and European officials, especially around climate change policy and the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, while urging the French audience to overlook the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian nature. “Despite the difference in social systems, China and the EU are meant to be comprehensive strategic partners, not systemic rivals,” he said, referring to the European Union’s landmark 2019 warning about China.
The foreign minister has spent the last week in Europe, a tour that began in Italy and continued through the Netherlands, Norway, France, and Germany. Chinese Foreign Affairs Director Yang Jiechi is picking up where Wang leaves off with a separate trip this week to Greece and Spain. The itinerary suggests that China is trying to consolidate the political ties built through economic partnerships — Italy and Greece have signed up for Beijing’s vaunted Belt and Road Initiative — but the outreach was marred by disagreements over human rights abuses and China’s heavy-handed approach to Taiwan and Hong Kong. “To challenge the one-China principle on Taiwan is to make an enemy of 1.4 billion Chinese people and is an international breach of trust,” Wang said in Germany on Monday as he rebuked Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil’s visit this week to the island. “We must make him pay a heavy price for his short-sighted actions and political opportunism.” Wang, during his address in Paris on Sunday, accused the United States of “publicly coercing countries into choosing sides” and raised the specter of an international crisis to lobby European allies to “join hands” with Beijing against the Trump administration. “It has come to this stage because some hard-liners in the U.S. have gone to great lengths to portray China as a major rival,” he said. "These acts are threatening to push the world as we know it to the brink of turmoil and division.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/china-radical-trump-administration-building-new-iron-curtain