China blames U.S. for bilateral tensions, reaffirms support for Palestine

BEIJING — China’s top diplomat slammed the U.S. on Thursday for worsening bilateral tensions, while reiterating Beijing’s support for peaceful resolutions to the Israel-Palestine and Russia-Ukraine conflicts.

“There is some progress in the China-U.S. bilateral relationship, but we have to point out that U.S. continues to persist with a wrong understanding of China and it has not fulfilled the promises it has made,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters at a briefing on Thursday, according to a CNBC translation of his comments in Mandarin.

Wang’s comments came as the U.S. Senate’s homeland security committee voted Wednesday to move a bill that could limit U.S. market excess for Chinese biotech firms. A member of President Joe Biden’s administration also

Wang also pledged to work with Southeast Asian nations to make the South China Sea “a sea of peace and cooperation.”

His comments come after yet another clash between Chinese coast guard vessels and those from the Philippines on resupply missions to troops stationed on an old warship that Manila grounded at the Second Thomas Shoal more than a decade ago to stake its sovereignty claims in the South China Sea.

Top officials from Australia and other Southeast Asian countries gathered in Melbourne for the inaugural Australia-ASEAN summit have urged restraint on all sides.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague ruled in 2016 that China’s claims over vast portions of the South China Sea have no basis in international law — a ruling that Beijing has rejected.

Beijing has also taken offence at joint exercises and patrols that U.S. and other Western naval powers have conducted with various Asian nations in international waters that Beijing claims as its own.

On Thursday, Wang repeated a warning for “some countries outside the region” to “not stir trouble and take sides” in the South China Sea.