China's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Tells Dan Coats To Give Up the Zero-Sum Game

Jan. 30, 2019 (EIRNS)— During today’s regular press briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang replied sharply to a question about U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dan Coats’s ravings yesterday in Washington, in which he had charged that Russia and China were “eroding well-established norms and trying to rebuild the international system,” while increasing the risk of “regional threats.”

As major powers with global influence, Geng said, China and Russia, both permanent members of the UN Security Council, “maintain that concerted efforts should be made to uphold the international order with the purposes and principles of the UN Charter at the center, promote multipolarity in the world, and make international relations more democratic.” Relations between the two nations are at their “best time in history,” he continued, precisely because they

“have left behind the outdated zero-sum game mindset which presupposes that two major powers must be either allies or rivals, [and instead] regarded each other as source of development opportunities, and established the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Coordination.”

The two, he said, have forged “a new type of state-to-state relations.”

As to whether the two nations increase the risk of regional threats, Geng recalled his answer a year ago, when U.S. officials addressing a Senate hearing singled out China and Russia as threats. What he had stated at that time is still relevant, Geng said:

“It baffles me as to where the U.S. derives its strong sense of insecurity. I want to stress that it is impossible to find absolute security in the world. Moreover, no country should even think of achieving its security at the expense of others’ security.”

The Chinese side, he said,

“always advocates a new security concept featuring common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security. ... The U.S. should follow the call of the times for peace and development and make concerted efforts with China, Russia, and other members of the international community to jointly uphold world peace and security.”