China Blasts US for Military, Cultural ‘Hegemony’ as Ties Sour

China laid out a fresh laundry list of problems it has with how the US uses its power, underscoring how tensions between the two nations have worsened over issues from the alleged spy balloon dispute to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

(Bloomberg) — China laid out a fresh laundry list of problems it has with how the US uses its power, underscoring how tensions between the two nations have worsened over issues from the alleged spy balloon dispute to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The official Xinhua News Agency published a 4,000-word article on Monday titled “U.S. Hegemony and Its Perils” that lays out Beijing’s sweeping view of how the US misbehaves on the world stage in the political, military, economic, technological and cultural spheres.

The article said the US “embeds American values in its products such as movies,” to dominate public opinion. “When Hollywood movies descend on the world, they scream the American values tied to them,” it added.

The denunciation comes with US-China ties at a fresh low after the two nations’ top diplomats traded barbs at a security conference in Germany over the weekend. The latest debate is over the US decision this month to shoot down what it said was a spy balloon that flew over the country.

China has countered that the aircraft was a civilian weather device that was blown off course, and said the US response was out of bounds.

Read More: US-China Meeting Only Worsens Tensions Over Balloon, Russia

The Xinhua article on Monday, published in Chinese and English, called on the US to “conduct serious soul-searching. It must critically examine what it has done, let go of its arrogance and prejudice, and quit its hegemonic, domineering and bullying practices.”

China frequently publishes long documents laying out its complaints with the US government. Earlier this month, the Foreign Ministry posted an essay about the US use of sanctions in disputes with other nations.

“The nature of the US long-arm jurisdiction,” it said, was “to maintain US hegemony, suppress foreign competitors, interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, and even subvert the governments of other countries.”

Beijing later sanctioned Lockheed Martin Corp. and a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies Corp. for selling weapons to Taiwan. That largely symbolic move came days after the US added six Chinese companies to an export blacklist over what it argued were links to a military-backed global balloon espionage program.

–With assistance from Zibang Xiao.

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