Speaking to Fareed Zakaria on Feb. 7, following the telephone conversation between Secretary of State Blinken and Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi, China’s Ambassador to Washington Cui Tiankai said that he thought the conversation, judging from the U.S. readout showed “more example of power, than power of example,” rephrasing what Biden said in his foreign policy speech. “You don’t have an effective foreign policy just by talking tough or playing tough,” Cui said. “This is not the right way of doing diplomacy. I think there is a clear need for good sense of mutual respect. People have to show good will and good faith. Of course, all countries have values and interests to defend. For China, national sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, these are the core values and core interests we will defend, we will do whatever it takes to defend, no matter who says what.”
Cui went on to make clear that China’s success is a result of the hard work of the Chinese people, and not some bounty bestowed from abroad. Zakaria then declared that China was becoming more restrictive toward U.S. technology companies, i.e., Facebook and Google, and thereby created the need for both countries to develop their own separate technologies. Cui simply pointed out that most of the restrictions were imposed by the U.S. and refuted the notion that U.S. tech companies wanted to “share” their technologies. These companies go to China simply to make money in the Chinese market, he said, not to share their technology with China, and that’s all well and good, and China is open to that, but the restrictions are being imposed by the U.S.
