Beijing: Constantly under attack by the United States-led West over its stand on the war in Ukraine, China today hit out at the US and accused it of “watching the fire from across the river, fanning the flame and even profiting from the so-called offshore balancing strategy”. The accusations come at a time Ukraine claimed another mass burial (after Bucha) of dead civilians killed by Russian aggressors was found in Mariupol, in the Livoberezhnyi district, near the cemetery of the village Vynohradne.
Calling the US the culprit and leading instigator of the Ukraine crisis, China stated the US proclaimed “vociferously” to champion humanitarianism, but in fact, only 12 Ukrainians managed to enter the US in March”.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian referred to US media reports, that said thousands of Ukrainian refugees were stuck along the US-Mexico border, some of whom were detained by the US. He was also asked about the UN Refugee Agency report of April 20, 2022, that mentioned that more than five million Ukrainians had crossed borders into neighbouring countries, leading to an unprecedented refugee crisis.
Squarely blaming Washington for the plight of Europe, Lijian said the United State’s “hegemonic order and rules based on power politics will be met with unanimous opposition from countries holding just positions”.
He claimed that after the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out, US arms dealers’ stock prices soared. “Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman’s stock prices increased by 25.6% and 24% respectively,” he said and virtually mocked European Union which now sees inflation rising to new records since the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out.
“The US gained substantial safe-haven flows from Europe,” he said. He noted that European economic indicators deteriorated under the impact of large-scale sanctions against Russia – The eurozone inflation rate in March surged to a record high of 7.4%, and some countries even registered an inflation rate as high as 15.6%. The European financial market witnessed the biggest ever weekly outflow in early March, plunging stocks and the euro.
Lijian said Europe had to bear the immediate consequences of the Russia-Ukraine conflict with the refugee, energy and economic crises coming one after another. He endorsed the view that Europe bears the brunt of US sanctions on Russia, and is ending up as the biggest loser in the Russia-Ukraine crisis.
Beijing also attacked the US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price for his statement that the US was committed to upholding the rules-based international order and other systems “that certain countries including Russia and China seek to challenge and even destroy”.
He said: “The US keeps talking about rules and order with the true intention of presenting its unilaterally-defined rules as international rules and imposing the US-led order serving its own selfish interests on the international community.”
He added: “When the US brazenly bombed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and invaded Iraq and Syria without the UN Security Council’s mandate, was it playing by international rules? When the US pushed for five waves of the eastward expansion of NATO in disregard of Russia’s security concerns, which resulted in the escalation of regional tensions, was it upholding the international system? When the US denigrated peace talks and fueled tensions in every way possible after the conflict between Russia and Ukraine broke out, was it abiding by international rules? When the US escalated unilateral sanctions regardless of the sluggish world economic recovery and pushed Europe and the world deeper into the crisis, was it upholding the international system?”
Lijian referred to Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova’s statement that the Russian military found some documents, which showed that the US Department of Defense conducts bio-military programs in Ukraine. “Indeed the US has not made any convincing explanations for its biomilitary activities yet. The US statements have so far been largely ambiguous and even self-contradictory, which further reinforces the suspicions of the international community. For example, how many cooperation facilities is the US running across the world? How many biological samples did the US ship out of Ukraine according to bilateral agreement and for what purpose? What is the sensitive information that Ukraine is not allowed to make public according to the agreement? Did the US conduct dangerous research overseas that is prohibited in the US?’
When asked about the statement by the US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman that China wasn’t helping the situation in Ukraine by doing things like amplifying Russian disinformation campaigns, Lijian said the accusations against China, “are entirely clichés and an old trick to smear and slander China”, and in essence a cover-up for US containment and suppression of China, which boils down to the US’ problematic perception of China.
– global bihari bureau
