China lashes US ‘hegemony, bullying’ in diplomatic grenade

China has published a five-page diatribe against the US, accusing it of attempting to mould the world in its own image.

Joe Biden and Xi Jinping meet on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Nusa Dua. Picture: AFP.

China has lobbed a diplomatic grenade at the US during President Joe Biden’s visit to Europe, accusing “the United States of Sanctions” of “hegemonic, domineering and bullying practices” to enforce global compliance with its mission to mould the world in its own image.

As the US president in Ukraine and Poland sought to showcase western unity and resolve in the face of Russia’s year-long invasion of Ukraine Beijing appeared to snuff out any prospect of an imminent rapprochement between the world’s biggest economy and the most populous nation.

As reports emerged Chinese president Xi Jinping was planning a rare trip to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin, China’s foreign ministry published a five-page diatribe against the US, accusing Washington of “bringing chaos and disaster” to nations in which it had intervened and using the US dollar as a “geopolitical weapon”.

“Since becoming the world’s most powerful country the US … has directly launched wars under the guise of promoting democracy … forced unilateral sanctions on others … and taken a selective approach to international law and rules,” the statement began, before poring provocatively over controversial aspects of US history.

China released its aggressive missive as President Joe Biden was in the Ukrainian capital on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) on a surprise visit to president Volodymyr Zelensky ahead the president’s marquee speech in Warsaw on Tuesday that contrasted the values of the US with “autocracies”.

The tone and content of the CCP’s accusations can only sour relations further between the two superpowers, whose frayed relations over everything from trade and Covid-19 to the status of Taiwan deteriorated further this month after the US shot down a Chinese spy balloon caught hovering over sensitive US military sites.

“The US in the name of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions; the 2003 Iraq War resulted in some 200,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths, including over 16,000 directly killed by the US military, and left more than a million homeless,” China claimed, accusing the US, without evidence, of using biological weapons in the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

In a sign China intended to provide military help to Russia in Ukraine, potentially triggering a global trade war given prior US warnings, Beijing accused the US of “waging a proxy, low-intensity, and drone war” against Russia, and reiterated its opposition to AUKUS and the Quad group of nations, of which Australia is part.

Elbridge Colby, a China expert at the Marathon Initiative in Washington, said the document – entitled US Hegemony and its Perils – illustrated “a major part of what binds China and Russia so tightly together: a shared opposition to an American-dominated world”.

“That interest is deeply rooted and likely to persist,” he told The Australian.

Beijing, which keeps a tight control on what information Chinese can access and employs a massive propaganda operation, accused the US “unprecedented draconian censorship on Russia-related contents”.

“The US pours staggering amounts of public funds into radio and TV networks to support their ideological infiltration, and these mouthpieces bombard socialist countries in dozens of languages with inflammatory propaganda day and night,” it said.

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi visited Moscow on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) as the Russian president delivered a lengthy ‘state of the union’ style address, blaming the US and the West for its invasion of Ukraine and announcing Russia would suspend participation in a longstanding nuclear arms treaty with the US.

Reports Xi Jinping was planning his own visit in April or May, according to the Wall Street Journal, surfaced soon after, underscoring the deepening ties between the two Eurasian giants a little over one year since the pair announced a ‘no limits’ partnership before Russia invaded Ukraine.

In a frosty meeting, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Wang Yi in a Munich security conference last week not to provide assistance to Russia’s dilapidated war machine, after revealing US intelligence concerns that Beijing was about to step up its assistance from “nonlethal” to “lethal” support.

In a phone call with Xi Jinping last March President Biden threatened the CCP with undefined consequences if it provided “material support” to Russia.

In a possible clue to future efforts of Russia and China to create a rival reserve currency and financial infrastructure as they seek to coax developing nations away from the G7’s economic or, the CCP declared the US currency “the main source of instability and uncertainty in the world economy”.

Since Russia was booted out of the international payments system last year, the share of Russia’s international transactions performed in Yuan has surged, and it has become more dependent on Chinese imports than any other nation except North Korea.

“The yuan’s share in [Russian] stock market trading has skyrocketed from 3 per cent to 33 per cent,” noted the Carnegie Endowment for Peace in a February analysis.