Who's the real bully?

Note: The following article is taken from the Chinese-language "Commentaries on International Affairs".

The recent open letter written by a retired navy officer to U.S. President Donald Trump that accuses China of being expansionist and using its power to intimidate others would be more credible if it pointed its finger at the United States as being the global bully rather than China.

USS Carl Vinson sailing through the South China Sea, March 2, 2017. [File photo: VCG]

The letter says that in the American political system, "politics is the norm, and war is the exception. It is explicitly the opposite in the [People's Republic of China's] worldview." This statement is absurd. Since its founding in 1776, the United States has been at war for more than 90 percent of its existence. In recent years, the United States has been behind many major global security crises. Washington started the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on the excuse of fighting terror. Its attacks on Syria have caused large numbers of civilian deaths and injuries. Even during the administration of President Barack Obama, once hailed as the "peaceful president", the United States dropped 26,000 bombs on seven countries in the last year of his tenure alone.

As for the Trump administration, it has taken unilateral actions against countries around the world, including formally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and unilaterally withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, moves that have both raised tensions in the Middle East. Washington also abandoned the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty it signed with Moscow, shaking the foundations of global strategic security. And tensions follow in the wake of the warships that Washington sends into the waters near dozens of countries under the guise of freedom of navigation.

According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, military spending by the United States surpassed 640 billion U.S. dollars last year, nearly equal to the military spending of the following eight biggest-spending countries combined. The per capita military spending of the United States last year was some eleven times that of China, so it's no surprise that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said his country was the "most warlike nation in the history of the world," while "China has not wasted a single penny on war."

The open letter cited the situation of the Taiwan Straits as evidence to prove its claim that "China is not and never has been a peaceful regime." But it is known to all that the Taiwan issue is a core interest of China. The mainland has repeatedly expressed its willingness to strive for a peaceful reunification of the two sides with the utmost sincerity and best efforts. But Beijing makes no promise to renounce the use of force and reserves the option of taking all necessary measures. It's aimed at external interference and a few Taiwan separatists, and not the fellow Chinese on the island. The fact that efforts to maintain unity are called bullying and intimidation by some American politicians is an obvious intervention in China's domestic affairs. They've spared no effort to defame China because their long-standing hegemonic behavior has encountered strong resistance during the advance of economic globalization and the development of a multipolar world.

China has long been committed to maintaining world peace. It is the largest contributor of peacekeepers among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, having dispatched more than 37,000 peacekeepers on 24 peacekeeping missions. China's funded 12 percent of the UN general budget in 2019, up from 2 percent in 2005. By comparison, as of January 1 this year, the United States owed some 776 million U.S. dollars to the peacekeeping budget, in addition to the 381 million U.S. dollars it owed to the regular UN budget. According to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, more than one-third of the peacekeeping budget arrears are owed by the United States.

Humanity faces many shared challenges. There is a need for the United States and China, two permanent UN Security Council members, to work together to resolve major security concerns, such as the nuclear issues on the Korean Peninsula and in Iran, and the armed conflicts in the Middle East. Only by ditching its Cold War mindset can the United States avoid the fate of being deserted by civilized society in the 21st Century.