China will ‘play along to the end’ with US, says its top diplomat Wang Yi

BEIJING - Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Feb 14 that China will “play along to the end” if the United States is bent on suppressing the country even though Beijing does not wish to be in conflict with Washington.

Mr Wang, speaking at the Munich Security Conference, said China would respond resolutely to unilateral “bullying” practices, but hopes the US can work together with it in the same direction.

Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump

slapped an additional 10 per cent tariff on all Chinese goods

despite having what he had described as a “good” telephone call with Chinese leader Xi Jinping weeks earlier.

The levies spurred China to

hit back with up to 15 per cent in duties on some US imports,

reigniting fears of a full-blown trade war between the world's largest economies.

In the weeks before Mr Trump was sworn in, the Biden administration

declared more curbs on advanced technology that can be sold to China,

in further efforts to stop Chinese firms from developing high-tech chips that can be used by Chinese military applications.

Beijing said the curbs had been part of a long-running plan to contain the technological progress of China.

China has developed and grown by overcoming difficulties and obstacles, and will not be afraid, Mr Wang said at the Munich conference, whose attendees included US Vice-President J.D. Vance.

Mr Wang then cited several Chinese sayings, including one from the first chapter of the Chinese classic, the Book of Changes, as the I Ching is known: “The movement of Heaven is full of vigour. Thus the gentleman (follows suit and) makes himself strong and untiring.”

“These lines are hard to translate, you can get DeepSeek to help,” Mr Wang said with a smile.

DeepSeek is an artificial intelligence app developed by China despite US chip curbs, an app that is

threatening to challenge the dominance of US generative AI chatbots

including ChatGPT. REUTERS