(AP) – China’s Defense Ministry on Sunday blasted a critical U.S. report on the country’s military ambitions, saying it is the U.S. instead that poses the biggest threat to the international order and world peace.
The statement follows the Sept. 2 release of the annual Defense Department report to Congress on Chinese military developments and goals that it said would have “serious implications for U.S. national interests and the security of the international rules-based order.”
Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Wu Qian called the report a “wanton distortion” of China’s aims and the relationship between the People’s Liberation Army and China’s 1.4 billion people. “Many years of evidence shows that it is the U.S. that is the fomenter of regional unrest, the violator of the international order and the destroyer of world peace,” he said.
U.S. actions in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and other countries over the past two decades have resulted in the deaths of more than 800,000 people and displacement of millions, Qian said. “Rather than reflecting on itself, the U.S. issued a so-called report that made false comments about China’s normal defense and military construction,” he said in the statement.
“We call on the U.S. to view China’s national defense and military construction objectively and rationally, cease making false statements and related reports, and take concrete actions to safeguard the healthy development of bilateral military relations.” READ MORE
