Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Photo: Xinhua

 
No country is superior to others, and China will never accept any country that thinks of itself this way, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Saturday prior to US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman's two-day visit to China starting on Sunday.

Wang made the remarks at the third round talk with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi at the China-Pakistan Foreign Ministers' Strategic Dialogue held in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province. 

The senior diplomat's statement was in response to US State Department spokesperson Ned Price's explanations of Sherman's trip to China as "from a position of strength" due to its consultations with its allies. The Department also said in a press release on Wednesday that the meetings are "part of ongoing US efforts to hold candid exchanges with PRC officials to advance US interests and values, and to responsibly manage the relationship."

"The US has always put pressure on others with its self-claimed strengths in a condescending manner," Wang refuted. "But I want to tell the US side that there is never a country that is superior to others, and there shouldn't be one." He also stressed that China will never accept any country who thinks this way.

If the US still hasn't learned how to treat other countries equally, then China, together with the international community, has a responsibility to teach the US, Wang noted. 

The US is not qualified to lecture China or interfere in China's internal affairs, nor is it qualified to say it deals with China from "a position of strength," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a press conference on Friday.

Concluding her trip in South Korea, Sherman's next stop on her Asia tour will be the highly anticipated meeting with Wang and Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Xie Feng in North China's Tianjin city scheduled from Sunday to Monday.

Global Times