Beijing says it will hold a high-level security event with all relevant parties in the world at an appropriate time to discuss the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
The Chinese government unveiled the Global Security Initiative Concept Paper on Tuesday, saying that China had stayed committed to respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries and abiding by the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter.
“Security is the right of all countries in the world, not the exclusive privilege of certain countries,” China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang said on Tuesday. “It should not be decided only by some individual countries.”
The Concept Paper said all countries should support political settlement of hotspot issues such as the Ukraine crisis through dialogue and negotiation.
The paper was published ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s planned delivery – on February 24, which marks the first anniversary of the war – of a proposal document about how the Ukraine crisis should be resolved.
“The one-year mark of the Ukraine crisis is just days away,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said in a regular media briefing on Monday. “China will release a position document on seeking political settlement of the Ukraine crisis.”
“It is the US, not China, that has been pouring weapons into the battlefield,” Wang said in response to a speech in which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken worried that China might provide Russia with weapons and ammunition for the war in Ukraine.
“The US is in no position to tell China what to do. We would never stand for finger-pointing, or even coercion and pressurizing from the US on our relations with Russia,” he added.
Wang said the coming document would reaffirm Xi’s important propositions, including respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, upholding the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, taking seriously the legitimate security concerns of all countrie, and supporting all efforts conducive to a peaceful resolution of the crisis.
He said the document would oppose the use of nuclear and biochemical weapons and call for efforts to ensure the safety of civil nuclear facilities. He said China hoped to work with all parties to continue the effort so that peace would prevail at an early date.
Xi’s plan to propose a plan to resolve the Ukraine matter was first announced by China’s State Councillor Wang Yi in Munich last Saturday. Wang also met Blinken on the sideline of the Munich Security Conference on the same day. But their meeting did not help ease US-China tensions.
The concept paper came a day after the Chinese foreign ministry on Monday released a long and contentious article entitled “US hegemonic, domineering and bullying practices and their perils.”
The article accused the US of undermining world peace and people’s livelihood with its technology, military and cultural hegemony. It said the US had sanctioned nearly 40 countries, including Russia and Iran, and initiated color revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia and wars in Syria and Afghanistan.
“The US has tried to maintain its monopoly in the high-tech field through suppression and technological blockade and stop other countries from developing their technologies and economies,” said the article. “The US generalizes the concept of national security, uses state power to suppress and sanction Huawei Technologies, forbids the company from using US chips and operating systems and restricts Huawei products from entering the US market.”
The article said the US had so far imposed sanctions on more than 1,000 Chinese companies with various excuses. It said the US had also strengthened export controls, tightened investment reviews and suppressed Chinese social media applications including TikTok and WeChat.
It said the US created small circles such as the “chip alliance” and “clean network” and excluded the countries that it claims have poor democracy and human right records. It criticized the US for lobbying the Netherlands and Japan to restrict exports of chips and related tools to China.
It also stressed that the US had used the 1985 Plaza Accord to push yen appreciation, which had hurt the Japanese economy in the following three decades. It said the US forced Japan to sign the US-Japan semiconductor agreement in 1986 and took Japan’s global market shares in the chip sector.
“China has always opposed all forms of hegemonism and power politics, and opposed interference in the internal affairs of other countries,” said the article. “The US should reflect on itself, deeply examine what it has done, abandon arrogance and prejudice and stop its hegemonic, domineering and bullying practices.”
The article was widely circulated by state media including China Central TV and Xinhua.
Russia news agency TASS reported that Wang arrived in Moscow on Tuesday and might hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Blinken originally planned to visit China in early February but the trip was canceled after a Chinese balloon was seen flying over the US’s airspace.
Political tensions between Washington and Beijing had increased in late January after the Netherlands and Japan agreed with the Biden administration to restrict the export of their chip-making tools to China.
“While some countries are pushing unilateralism and protectionism and addicted to decoupling and severing industrial and supply chains, China hopes that the Netherlands would play a positive role in ensuring the stability of the global industrial and supply chains and promoting global economic recovery,” Wang Yi told the Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra in Munich on Saturday.
On Tuesday, Beijing sent Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong to Japan for the 17th China-Japan security dialogue.
Read: Raytheon, Lockheed take a balloon war hit in China
Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3