China Criticizes US-Japan Security Talks Statement

(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) TOKYO, Jan 13 (KUNA) -- China Friday expressed firm opposition to a US-Japan joint statement released after their 'two-plus-two' security talks, urging the two countries to abandon the 'Cold-War mentality and ideological bias', and not to disturb a stable Asia-Pacific.
'The wording on China in this joint statement smacks heavily of a zero-sum Cold-War mentality and contains groundless smears and attacks on China. We are firmly against it,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a press conference in Beijing.
'The US and Japan claim to champion a free and open Indo-Pacific region, but what they do is putting up various exclusionary blocs to create division and confrontation,' said Wang.
'They claim to uphold the rules-based international order, but what they do is trampling on international law and the basic norms governing international relations and grossly interfering in other countries' internal affairs,' Wang said, adding that these acts have become a real challenge to regional peace, security and stability.
Wang made remarks when asked to comment on the joint statement issued after the Security Consultative Committee in Washington Wednesday between the foreign and defense ministers of the US and Japan.
The joint statement noted that Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada along with their US counterparts Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin agreed that China's foreign policy seeks to reshape the international order to its benefit and to employ China's growing political, economic, military and technological power to that end.
The four ministers also criticized China on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and maritime issues.
'We urge the US and Japan to abandon the Cold-War mentality and ideological bias, stop creating imaginary enemies and stop trying to sow the seeds of a new Cold War in the Asia-Pacific, and not to become disrupters of a stable Asia-Pacific,' the spokesman stressed. (end)
mk.mt

MENAFN13012023000071011013ID1105427065