China yesterday defended its rising global status, saying countries should view themselves as “passengers in the same boat” and not fear Beijing’s “peaceful” economic and political development.
In a two-page commentary carried by the English-language China Daily, State Councilor Dai Bingguo (戴秉國), the country’s most senior foreign policymaker, urged the world to work with China — but warned it would not be bullied.
China respected human rights, Dai wrote in the article, which comes just days after the Nobel committee held a ceremony in honor of peace laureate Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), a jailed rights advocate.
“Countries should consider themselves passengers in the same boat and cross the river peacefully together instead of fighting one another and trying to push one another off the boat,” Dai said.
“Those selfish practices of conquering or threatening others by force, or seeking development space and resources by non-peaceful means are losing ground,” Dai said.
“It has also become very unpopular for some countries to identify friends and foes on the basis of ideology and gang up under various pretexts in quest of dominance of world affairs,” he wrote.
He, however, cautioned: “We respect others, but do not allow others to bully us.”
Dai’s commentary came amid growing international concern at China’s global rise, especially in regard to territorial disputes in adjacent waters and Beijing’s refusal to condemn the provocative behavior of close ally North Korea.
Beijing has also robustly defended its trade and currency policies, despite a flurry of spats with trading partners and ongoing pressure for it to allow the yuan to trade more freely.
“The international community should welcome China’s peaceful development rather than fear it, help rather than hinder it and support rather than constrain its effort,” Dai said.
“The international community should understand and respect China’s legitimate interests and concerns in the course of its peaceful development,” he said.
China cannot isolate itself from the world, nor can the world achieve peace and prosperity without China, he said.
“Some people in the world have the unnecessary worry that China will turn its growing economic power into military might,” Dai acknowledged, but “China pursues a defense policy that is defensive in nature ... it is neither driven by arms race nor the desire to seek hegemony or expansion.”
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.