Oh dear. Getting a bit of the 'ol "This is my last territorial demand in Europe"* vibe from Herr Xi.
From The South China Morning Post, July 26:
US-China relations: Beijing lays down red lines for first time in Sherman meeting
- Chinese foreign vice-minister Xie Feng tells his US counterpart that the two countries are in ‘stalemate’
- Xie says Washington must lift sanctions and abandon Huawei financial chief’s extradition request
....MUCH MOREChina has for the first time given the US a list of red lines and remedial action it must take to repair
relations, including lifting sanctions and dropping its extradition request for Huawei financial chief Meng Wanzhou.Chinese foreign vice-minister Xie Feng told US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman on Monday morning that US-China relations had reached a “stalemate” and faced “serious consequences”, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement.
“The foundational reason is that some people in the US are treating China as an ‘imagined enemy’,” it quoted Xie as saying.
After the meeting, Xie said China gave two lists to the US – one with one remedial action for Washington to take towards China, and the other a series of Beijing’s key concerns.
Items on the remedial list include lifting the visa restrictions on Communist Party members, their families, and Chinese students; lifting the sanctions imposed on Chinese leaders, government officials and agencies; removing restrictions on Confucius Institutes and Chinese companies; cancelling rulings determining Chinese media as foreign agents; and dropping its request to extradite Meng from Canada.
Items on the list of concerns include addressing unfair treatment of Chinese citizens in the United States, harassment of the Chinese embassy and its consulates, the rise of anti-Asian and anti-Chinese sentiment, and violence against Chinese citizens.
Xie said the Chinese side also “expressed its strong dissatisfaction towards the wrong remarks and actions of the US” in relation to investigations into the origins of Covid-19, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and the South China Sea.
“We urge the United States not to underestimate the strong determination, firm will and strong ability of the 1.4 billion Chinese people to safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests,” state news agency Xinhua quoted him as saying.
Before the meeting on Monday, both sides were wrangling for the upper hand, with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi saying China would give the US a “tutorial” on how to treat other nations equally. A senior US official said Sherman would engage China from a position of “strength and solidarity”.
Sherman is expected to meet Wang in Tianjin, an hour from the capital Beijing, on Monday afternoon.
Xie also slammed the US government for engaging in “all-encompassing containment of China” to restrict the country’s development and to continue US hegemony....
*Adolf Hitler im Berliner Sportpalast, 26.09.1938
....And now we face the last great problem that must be resolved and that will be resolved! It is the last territorial demand I shall make in Europe. It is a demand which I shall insist upon and a demand which I will satisfy so God will! A short history of this problem: Waving the banner of the right to selfdetermination of the peoples, Central Europe was torn apart in 1918 as certain crazed statesmen set to redraw the political landscape. Atomized and divided, new states were arbitrarily created in Central Europe in complete disregard of the origins of their peoples, their national desires, and of economic necessities....
