By Joe Cash
BEIJING (Reuters) -China said on Monday that the United States was in no position to make demands, after the top U.S. diplomat warned his Chinese counterpart at the weekend against China providing weapons to Russia in its war in Ukraine.
“The United States is in no position to make demands of China,” foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a regular daily briefing in Beijing, when asked about U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s comments.
Wang Wenbin was speaking as Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi was expected to arrive in Moscow, days after he met Blinken on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich.
“China’s comprehensive collaborative partnership with Russia is based on the basis of non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-targeting of third parties, and is a matter within the sovereignty of two independent countries,” Wang Wenbin said.
He was referring to the “no limits” partnership struck just over a year ago between Beijing and Moscow, weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We will never accept the U.S. pointing fingers at Sino-Russian relations or even coercing us,” Wang Wenbin told the briefing in Beijing.
U.S.-China ties have been further strained this month after the U.S. military shot down what it says was a Chinese spy balloon that had drifted over the United States. China says the balloon was a civilian research vessel that was accidentally blown off course, calling the U.S. response an over-reaction.
Since the balloon incident, which led Blinken to postpone a planned trip to Beijing, Chinese state media has been especially critical in its coverage of the United States.
On Monday, state media released a lengthy report accusing the United States of seeking political, military, economic, technological and cultural “hegemony” since World War Two.
(Reporting by Joe Cash; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
