The United States must stop suppressing China’s development and must not continue the “old routine of unilateral bullying,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
In the latest telephone correspondence between the two leaders, Wang said the United States should pay attention to China’s legitimate concerns, stop slowing and suppressing its development, and not constantly challenge China’s red line with the “salami tactic,” referring to the strategy of using a series of small actions to achieve a much larger result that would be difficult to achieve with a single big action.
Wang’s remarks follow President Xi Jinping’s meeting with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden at the G20 summit in Bali last month, where they discussed a number of burning issues, including Taiwan. They were their first in-person conversations since 2017.
China considers Taiwan its own territory and believes that the US is slowly eroding its interests and challenging its position, while taking care to avoid forceful action that could give China a clear reason to react with full force.
Biden had raised objections to China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan,” which he said undermine peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the wider region, and jeopardize global prosperity.
Xi called it a “first red line” that should not be crossed in China-U.S. relations.
