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China's new Foreign Minister Qin Gang during his first press conference at the National People's Congress. / Picture: APA/AFP/NOEL CELIS© China's new Foreign Minister Qin Gang during his first press conference at the National People's Congress. / Picture: APA/AFP/NOEL CELIS
It was an amazing performance by Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang. He accused the United States of suppression and distorted perception of Chinese motives, and threatened "catastrophic consequences" if the conflict between Washington and Beijing escalated. In the same breath, the former ambassador to the United States praised the relationship with Russia and equated rumored Chinese armaments aid for the warmonger Moscow with US arms deliveries to Taiwan.
Was it the honest cry of despair from a misunderstood state that wants to make itself heard on the international stage with its back against the wall? Or the new tone of an emerging power that yearns for a world order in which China, representing an Eastern civilization, dethrones the West?
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Yes, the rhetoric is charged. Concerns about Chinese influence in Europe and the USA are sometimes reaching hysterical proportions. But that Chinese modernization, as rumored, is a path of peace, cooperation, mutual benefit, harmony - Beijing has this illusion through its breach of contract in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, through its territorial claims in the South China Sea, through the suppression of ethnic minorities in the province Xinjiang itself dismantled.
Cry for help or roar of attack? What is certain is that even in Beijing, one or the other doubts the Xi Jinping model. Because a political leadership that has everything under control would not have to strike such nationalistic tones in order to convince their own population of their superiority.
