Reality Check (Part 10 of 21) Falsehoods in US Perceptions of China https://english.news.cn (June 19 2022) Part 9 is at https://billtotten.wpcomstaging.com/2022/07/05/reality-check-part-9-of-21/. Falsehood 10 China purports to champion sovereignty and territorial integrity while standing with and defending the Russian government that brazenly violates them. Reality Check On the Ukraine issue, China has always adhered to an objective and just position, a position shared by most countries. The Cold War mentality and power politics is the root cause of the Ukraine crisis. The US should earnestly shoulder its due responsibilities and take concrete actions to ease the situation and solve the problems. * The US has betrayed its own promises and kept pushing for the eastward expansion of Natocreating the Ukraine crisis. When meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, the then US Secretary of State James Baker gave clear assurances that "there would be no extension of Nato's jurisdiction for forces of Nato one inch to the east". However, the US has led five rounds of Nato eastward expansion since 1999, increasing its membership from 16 to 30, and advancing Nato more than 1,000 kilometers eastward to the Russian border, forming a C-shaped encirclement of the Black Sea. In 1997, former US diplomat and observer of the Soviet Union George Kennan wrote in his New York Times Op-Ed that "expanding Nato would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era". In 2014, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in The Washington Post that if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it should not join Nato, and that it must not be either side's outpost against the other, it should function as a bridge between them. At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2022 in Davos, Kissinger said that Ukraine should have been a bridge between Europe and Russia, but that opportunity does not now exist in the same manner. Russia has been for 400 years an essential part of Europe, and on a number of occasions as the guarantor by which the European balance could be re-established. The current policy should keep in mind the restoration of this role is important to develop. An American expert on international affairs points out in an article that the US government should bear considerable responsibility for the deterioration of relations with Russia caused by its major mistake of greenlighting the Nato expansion. Noting that "America and Nato aren't innocent bystanders", he also believed that it is "the height of folly" for some US officials to brag in public about leaks or even intelligence sharing between the US and Ukraine. He warned that such instigation on the US side could dangerously widen the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. According to Clare Daly, Member of the European Parliament, the US has been adding fuel to the fire on Ukraine because they want to weaken Russia and benefit from the crisis, for which Europe will pay a heavy price. There is still no hope of peace in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, mainly because the US does not want Russia and Ukraine to reach a peace agreement. Former US Senator Bill Bradley said that "the fundamental blunder that the United States made in the late 1980s, early 1990s was the expansion of Nato". Former US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said in an interview if Joe Biden simply promised not to include Ukraine in Nato, the war would have been prevented. Over the years, the US has pursued interventionism and grossly violated the sovereignty of Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Syria, and other countries. Alfred de Zayas, a senior UN expert, said in an exclusive interview that from the perspective of international law, Russia's military actions in Ukraine violated the UN Charter, but the United States and Nato have broken international law so often over the years that "precedents of permissibility" have therefore been set for Russia's current actions in terms of customary international law. * The US has been fanning the flames on the Ukraine issue. Instead of promoting peace talks, the US continued to provide weapons to Ukraine, escalating tensions and expanding the conflict, making it more prolonged and complicated. This has sufficiently exposed the selfish nature of the US. On 25 April 2022, US Defense Secretary Austin said after a visit to Ukraine that the US wants to use the war to "see Russia weakened". In late May 2022, on top of the original 13.6 billion dollars in aid, the US Congress voted to approve another over 40 billion dollars in military and economic aid to Ukraine. The total assistance has exceeded 70 percent of the combined military expenditure of Russia and Ukraine in 2021. The ongoing crisis has cost Europe heavily in political, economic, and social aspects, but the US is reaping dividends, with its arms dealers and food and energy companies gaining huge profits. For example, the market value of US military-industrial giants has surged by hundreds of billions, and the price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exported to Europe is more than 10 times higher than a year ago. As the result of the conflict, more than 6.5 million Ukrainians have fled to neighboring European countries, posing an unprecedented refugee crisis. But the US admitted only 12 refugees from Ukraine in March 2022. Thousands of Ukrainian refugees remain stranded on the US-Mexico border, and many were in US custody. Even when the UN and the international community are calling for an early end to the conflict, some in the US are still claiming that they would "fight to the last Ukrainian". * The relationship between China and Russia features non-alliance, non-confrontation, and non-targeting at any third party. It is essentially different from the practice of the US and a small number of other Western countries, where they still stick to the Cold War mentality and a friend-or-foe dichotomy to draw ideological lines, form so-called "alliances" and "cliques", pursue bloc politics, and create confrontation and division. In the joint statement issued on 4 February 2022, China and Russia call on all to champion humanity's common values of peace, development, equity, justice, democracy, and freedom, respect the rights of all peoples to independently determine the development paths of their countries, and the sovereignty, security, and development interests of all countries, protect the UN-centered international system, and the international order based on international law, seek true multilateralism with the UN and its Security Council playing a central and coordinating role, promote more democratic international relations, and ensure peace, stability, and sustainable development across the world. * As a responsible major country, China's decisions and judgments on the Ukraine issue are made independently based on the merits of the matter. China has made great efforts to safeguard international peace and security and has been committed to promoting talks for peace and deescalating tensions. China maintains that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries should be respected, that the purposes and principles of the UN Charter should be upheld, that legitimate security concerns of all countries should be taken seriously, and that all efforts conducive to a peaceful resolution of the crisis should be supported. China's position is objective, fair, and consistent with the aspirations of most countries. * Of the 233 sovereign countries and regions in the world, 185 are not involved in sanctions on Russia. Among the more than 190 members of the UN, more than 140 countries, including Nato member state Turkey, have refused to impose sanctions on Russia. The combined population of countries and regions participating in sanctions against Russia and those not is 1.1 billion versus 6.5 billion. Among them, those who openly oppose sanctions have a combined population of 4.8 billion. About two-thirds of the world's population does not support Western positions on Ukraine, according to a report by the British Economist magazine. Source: fmprc.gov.cn Editor: huaxia2022-06-19 22:19:29 https://english.news.cn/20220619/edf2556087954b8d90440b077a3c3c21/c.html https://billtotten.wordpress.com/ https://www.ashisuto.co.jp--- To unsubscribe: List help: