Wang Responds to Biden Opening, Presents Needed Changes for Productive Dialogue and Cooperation

Feb. 23 , 2021 (EIRNS)—Foreign Minister Wang Yi was the keynote speaker at a Feb. 22 event at the Lanting Forum titled, “Promoting Dialogue and Cooperation and Managing Differences: Bringing China-U.S. Relations Back to the Right Track,” focussed on the restoration of civil and productive relations between China and the U.S. Wang Yi pointed to the extensive list of divisive, and in many cases illegal, policies implemented by President Donald Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Wang urged the new Biden Administration to:

• Stop smearing the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese political system;

• Stop supporting separatists in Taiwan;

• Stop interfering in China’s sovereign affairs in Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

• End the unreasonable tariffs;

• Lift the sanctions;

• Abandon the irrational suppression of Chinese tech companies;

• Lift the restrictions on educational, cultural and media institutions;

• Support research exchange.

Seeing the list in one place provides a shocking sense of the madness and criminality of the Pompeo belief that the U.S. could abandon international law and decency to act as a global dictator.

The Global Times coverage of the event observed that President Biden had stated in his speech to the G7 and the Munich Security Forum Feb. 19, “We cannot and must not return to the reflexive opposition and rigid blocs of the Cold War.” They also took note that Biden has already taken several steps to reverse some of the Trump-Pompeo anti-China policies (although reports on these steps were largely blacked out of the U.S. press): He paused the ban on WeChat and TikTok, the Chinese apps; he withdrew the order for universities to disclose financial arrangements with the Confucius Institutes; and he sponsored a dialogue between the leading epidemiologists of the two nations, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Zhong Nanshan, who have spoken by phone about cooperation in the fight against COVID-19, and will meet when they both address the opening session of the virtual Edinburgh Futures Conversations on March 2.