FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

Chinese Ambassador Cui Invites U.S. to Belt and Road Forum in April

Feb. 8, 2019—The Embassy of China in Washington used this year’s Spring Festival reception on Feb. 6 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of U.S.-China relations. U.S. government attendance was high-level, including Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and his wife, and Matthew Pottinger, the National Security Council Senior Director for Asian Affairs, and a number of Congress members, among the 750 guests.

In his address, Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai invited the United States to attend this year’s 2nd Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in April in Beijing, noting with appreciation that Pottinger had addressed the May 14-15, 2017 Belt and Road Forum as the U.S. representative. (Schiller Institute Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche also attended the plenary and addressed a workshop at the Forum.)

With new global challenges appearing among today’s profound changes, “more than ever before, the world needs China and the U.S. to work together,” Ambassador Cui said.

He continued:

“Our people need us to work together.... We need to promote mutual understanding so as to enhance mutual trust and avoid strategic miscalculations. We need better mutual understanding about each other’s past and present, economic and political systems, the culture and the society. People in China have always had a strong interest in learning more about America and from America. Hopefully there is a similar effort on this side of the Pacific to learn more about China, more about China’s ancient and modern history, about its 40 years of reform and opening-up, about the 70 years since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, about the hardships the Chinese people have gone through, and the strenuous efforts they have made throughout all these years. Then it would not be difficult to understand what China’s goals and intentions are and what the Chinese dream means for its people. Then it would not be difficult to understand that the Chinese people have every right to pursue a better life but they will never do it at the expense of other nations and that China is truly committed to working with all other countries to build a community of nations for a shared future.”

The U.S. and China “differ in history, culture and social system, but we should not be intimidated by those differences,” he emphasized, but if we act in good faith with mutual respect, “we can always find a way out.”