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China says Hegseth is touting a Cold War mentality in calling it a threat

Published: 01 Jun. 2025, 17:21

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivers a speech during the 22nd Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore on May 31. [AP/YONHAP]

China on Sunday denounced U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for calling the Asian country a threat, accusing him of touting a Cold War mentality as tensions between Washington and Beijing further escalate.

The foreign ministry said Hegseth had vilified Beijing with defamatory allegations the day before at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a global security conference. The statement also accused the United States of inciting conflict and confrontation in the region.

“Hegseth deliberately ignored the call for peace and development by countries in the region, and instead touted the Cold War mentality for bloc confrontation,” it said, referring to the post-World War II rivalry between the United States and the former Soviet Union.

“No country in the world deserves to be called a hegemonic power other than the United States itself,” it said, alleging that Washington is also undermining peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific.

Hegseth said in Singapore on Saturday that Washington will bolster its defenses overseas to counter what the Pentagon sees as rapidly developing threats by Beijing, particularly in its aggressive stance toward Taiwan.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, left, shakes hands with Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro before a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue Summit in Singapore on May 30. [AFP/YONHAP]

China’s army “is rehearsing for the real deal,” Hegseth said. “We are not going to sugarcoat it — the threat China poses is real. And it could be imminent.”

The Chinese statement stressed that the Taiwan question is entirely China’s internal affair, saying the United States must “never play with fire” with it. It also alleged that Washington had deployed offensive weaponry in the South China Sea, was “stoking flames and creating tensions in the Asia-Pacific” and "turning the region into a powder keg.”

In a Facebook post on Saturday, China's Embassy in Singapore said Hegseth’s speech was “steeped in provocations and instigation.”

The United States and China reached a deal last month to cut U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs from 145 percent to 30 percent for 90 days, creating time for negotiators from both sides to reach a more substantive agreement. China also reduced its taxes on U.S. goods from 125 percent to 10 percent.

But it's uncertain if a trade war truce will last. Trump in a social media post on Friday said he would no longer be “nice” with China when it comes to trade and accused Beijing of breaking an unspecified agreement with the United States.

Tensions escalated anew after the United States said on Wednesday it would start revoking visas for Chinese students studying there.

Separately, the Chinese Embassy in Singapore criticized attempts to link the issue of Taiwan with that of the war in Ukraine after French President Emmanuel Macron warned of a dangerous double standard in focusing on a potential conflict with China at the cost of abandoning Ukraine.

The embassy made no mention of Macron in its post on Facebook that included a photo showing the French president at the Singapore forum.

“If one tries to denounce ‘double standards’ through the lens of a double standard, the only result we can get is still a double standard,” it said.

China, which usually sends its defense minister to the Shangri-La forum, this time sent a lower-level delegation led by Maj. Gen. Hu Gangfeng, the vice president of the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University.

AP