The United States should abandon its obsession with containing China and stop using countries in the region as tools, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said at a briefing on Monday.
⠀
US President Joe Biden and the prime ministers of India, Japan and Australia, following a meeting in the QUAD format last Saturday, expressed serious concern about the situation in the East China and South China Seas, without directly naming China as the main source of concern. At the same time, as Western media write, Biden, with the microphone on, said that China continues to behave aggressively in the region, although this statement should have been made at negotiations “behind closed doors” without media access.
⠀
“QUAD in the US Indo-Pacific Strategy is positioned as the main mechanism of leadership in the region and is Washington’s tool to contain China and maintain American hegemony,” Lin Jian said, commenting on the summit.
⠀
He added that the “Indo-Pacific Strategy” attempts to build consensus on excluding and containing China by inflating the “China threat.”
⠀
“The United States constantly repeats that they are not targeting China, but the first topic of the summit was China, at this summit the PRC was discussed everywhere, they lie without a twinge of conscience, and even the American media do not believe it,” the diplomat said.
⠀
He said, “China has always maintained that cooperation between countries should not target third parties, let alone harm the interests of third parties.”
⠀
“Any regional initiative should follow the overall trend of the region and promote regional peace, stability and prosperity,” he added.
⠀
“The United States should abandon its obsession with maintaining hegemony and containing China, and stop using countries in the region as tools,” he stressed.
⠀
The QUAD (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) format was initiated in 2007 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as an informal consultative mechanism of four countries sharing the values of a free and open Indo-Pacific region. Moreover, if Japan and Australia are allies of the United States, then India, which is not connected with Washington by allied relations, was included in the “four” largely due to its growing role in the Indo-Pacific region and confrontation with China.
