The US Secretary of State said Saturday (February 18) that the Chinese plan to offer “deadly support” to the Russian government
China has denied supplying weapons to Russia in the war against Ukraine, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Saturday (February 18, 2023).
“It’s the United States that keeps supplying weapons to the battlefield, not China. The United States is not qualified to give orders to China,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters on Monday (February 20, 2023).
Wenbin also said that China “does not allow the US to criticize BeijingMoscow relations, much less use pressure and coercion.”
He also called on the US to “reflect seriously on its own actions and do more to calm the situation, promote peace and dialogue” and “stop blaming others and spreading false information”.
According to the spokesman, China’s position in the European conflict can be summed up in one sentence: “Encourage and promote dialogue”.
TENSION BETWEEN USA AND CHINA
On February 2, the US Department of Defense announced that it had spotted a “highaltitude Chinese surveillance balloon” over US territory. The equipment was located in the state of Montana near Malmstrom Air Force Base, where there are three fields of nuclear missile silos, a structure for storing and launching ballistic missiles.
“As soon as the balloon was spotted, the US government acted immediately to protect itself from the collection of classified information,” the Pentagon said in a statement. Here is the full text (22 KB, in English).
The following day, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken decided to postpone the February 5 trip to China. He was due to meet Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang to discuss the two countries’ relations and the increase in Covid19 cases in China.
On February 4, the United States claimed to have shot down the balloon off the coast of South Carolina after it flew over sensitive military terrain. The balloon represented a heightening of tensions between Americans and Chinese, who exchanged accusations about the episode.
China claims the object was a device “used for research purposes, mainly meteorological” that deviated from its course due to wind currents. On Saturday (February 18), Wang Yi said the US reaction to the balloon had been “hysterical”.
“There are so many balloons around the world and several countries have them, so the United States is going to shoot them all down?” he explained during the Munich Security Conference.