China is using the geopolitical instability triggered by US President Donald Trump to cast itself as the world’s reliable partner, as America retreats from the international system and embarks on a tariff war.
In a tightly stage-managed press conference on the sidelines of of China’s rubber stamp legislature on Friday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi projected China as an “anchor of stability” in a “changing and turbulent world”, one that would safeguard fairness and peace.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi addresses the media on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress in Beijing.Credit: AP
He said China was a beneficiary and custodian of the United Nations system, warning the “law of the jungle” would take hold without it, while issuing an indirect swipe at the United States, which hit China with 20 per cent tariffs on all its exports this week.
“Those with stronger arms and bigger fists should not be allowed to call the shots,” Wang said.
Wang declined to respond to directly to a question on whether Beijing would send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine but pledged that China would play a “constructive role” to help resolve the conflict. He also downplayed the idea that recent talks between the US and Russia would impact the alliance between Beijijng and Moscow.
“The China-Russia friendship will not change,” he said. “It is a constant in a turbulent world, rather than a variable in geopolitical gains.”
Hostesses fill up tea cups before the opening session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Tuesday.Credit: AP
With the Trump Administration using its opening weeks in power to upend decades of US foreign policy – scrapping overseas aid, pulling out of international organisations, weakening alliances with allies, and threatening to take control of territories like Greenland and the Panama Canal – China has eyed an opportunity to sell its own alternative to the US-led global order.
China, too, however, has selectively applied norms of international law to its own actions, aggressively pursuing dominance in the South China Sea and rejecting the UN’s findings that it had committed “serious human rights violations” against the Uyghur muslim minorities in Xinjiang.