Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who had interviewed China expert William Overholt at a Harvard seminar (see separate slug), made some choice comments about China in an interview with Bloomberg on Nov. 19. Even though he spoke from the standpoint of a longer-term “contest” with China, Summers said that it’s not “really for us to tell China how they should organize their entire society.” We should “stand up for some of our fundamental interests,” he said, but warned that at the same time “if we change our focus from building ourselves up to tearing China down, I think we will be making a very risky and very unfortunate choice.”
Summers went on: “We need to be very careful about giving China the sense that we are trying to change the traditional ‘One China’ policy, because I think that could risk disastrous conflict.” Summers added that he was “encouraged by what I saw” with the Nov. 14 Biden-Xi summit, which suggested “constructive movement” in the relationship.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian was asked about Summers’ comments on Nov. 22 at the daily press conference. He responded: “The U.S. needs to listen to the voices calling for reason, give up the zero-sum mentality, stop overstretching the concept of national security, and stop politicizing, instrumentalizing and weaponizing economic, trade and tech issues. China is ready to work with the U.S. to follow through on the important common understandings reached between the two heads of state at their meeting in Bali, and bring China-U.S. relations back to the track of stable growth.” [https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/2511_665403/202211/t20221122_10979312.html ]
