Talks between a high-ranking Chinese official and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman show China is smelling "weakness" with the United States and is making its ambitions clear, Rep. Michael Waltz said Tuesday.
"They do smell weakness and they're not even hiding their ambitions right now and their desire to embarrass the United States on the global stage," the Florida Republican told Fox Business' "Mornings With Maria."
Monday, China blamed the United States for what it says is a "stalemate" in bilateral relations in comments made while high-level talks started in the Chinese city of Tianjin.
Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng urged the United States "to change its highly misguided mindset and dangerous policy," according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
Further, Xinhua quoted Xie as telling Sherman that the relationship between the United States and China is in a stalemate because some Americans are portraying his nation as an "imagined enemy."
Sherman is the highest-ranking administration official to visit China since President Joe Biden's inauguration in January. However, talks were also tense between the two nations when they met on U.S. soil in Anchorage.
"(They said that) you cannot stop our rise, and anyone who tries will bash their head against the great Chinese wall," said Waltz. ."So their ambitions are clear. The question is, what will the Biden administration do about it."
The power competition, meanwhile, is not only about China and the Western Pacific, but is "unfolding in Africa, in the Middle East, in places like Afghanistan that's sitting on a trillion dollars of mineral we where we had a base on China's western border that we just gave away."
He added that the Biden administration is trying to work with China, but "the Chinese Communist Party is clearly in a cold war with the United States."
"The Biden administration is still trying to play nice and figure out if they can engage on things like climate change," said Waltz. "They need to wake up and I think the entire country, America needs to wake up to what's going on and what the world will look like with a world run by the Chinese Communist Party. That's not one I want my kids and grandkids growing up in."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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