Days after the US defense department declared it would prioritize limiting China this year while preserving respectful ties, Beijing declared on Thursday that attempts to control it are “doomed to fail.”
Jiang Bin, a spokesman for the defense ministry, stated at a news briefing that “facts have proven that any attempt to contain or block China is doomed to fail.”
He did, however, add that Beijing was “willing to work with the US side” to advance relations, because President Donald Trump is scheduled to travel to China in April to meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
Washington would “deter China in the Indo-Pacific through strength, not confrontation,” according to the United States’ 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS), which was unveiled last week.
Because it adopted a more lenient stance toward longstanding adversaries China and Russia, it was a dramatic shift from previous Pentagon policy.
China was identified as Washington’s most significant challenge in the last NDS, which was published under Joe Biden, Trump’s predecessor.
The US ally Taiwan, which China claims as its own, is not included in the new declaration, which instead calls for “respectful relations” with Beijing.
However, it restated Washington’s intentions to establish a “strong denial defense” along the First Island Chain, which encompasses Taiwan and Japan.
Defense spokesperson Jiang promised to “resolutely safeguard” China’s fundamental interests and warned the US to “stop saying one thing while doing the opposite on issues concerning China’s core interests.”
Following a massive round of arms supplies to Taipei by the United States, its principal security ally, Beijing began conducting live-fire military exercises surrounding democratically controlled Taiwan in December.
