Chinese President in Veiled Warning to the US: Don’t Try to ‘Monopolize Regional Affairs’

By: American Decency Staff

Buoyed by the signing of a massive deal to buy Russian natural gas for the next 30 years, Chinese President Xi Jinping called Wednesday for a new security framework for Asia, in a speech which Chinese state media said contained veiled warnings to the United States.

“Someone who tries to blow out another’s oil lamp will set his beard on fire,” Xi told a summit of regional leaders in Shanghai.

The state-run China Daily suggested that the expression, a Kazakh proverb, was directed at America: “Beijing is urging Washington to get used to China’s rise and take a proper role in the region, which is the world’s economic engine but is also prone to security threats.”

That same expression – “get used to China’s rise” – made an appearance in an editorial last week in the Communist Party-affiliated Global Times, referring to territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas, where China sees the U.S. as siding with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines in their respective tussles with Beijing.

“No country should seek the so-called absolute security of itself at the expense of the security of other countries,” Xi told the gathering in Shanghai, speaking out against what he called outdated Cold War thinking and zero-sum games.

“No country should attempt to monopolize regional affairs or infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of other countries,” he added, calling for Asian problems to be solved by Asians themselves.

Xi was addressing a summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), a forum of 26 countries stretching from Turkey to the Far East.

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