Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, speaks on the first day of the 56th Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, Friday, Feb.14, 2020. (Sven Hoppe/dpa via AP)
By Maj. Gen. JinYinan
The 56th Munich Security Conference (MSC) was held in Munich, Germany from February 14 to16. As one of the most important forums on international strategy and security, the MSC is an outcome of the Cold War that originally focused on defensive security policies, but China were discussed at the forum extensively this year, a scenario unseen before.
It’s fair to say that the MSC has deviated from its original goal, devoting too much time to the discussion about China, which has taken the usual attendees by surprise.
The American politicians attending the forum were trying to turn every session into a place to smear China. The one firing the first bullet was Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, who claimed that China is seeking to export its digital autocracy through the telecom giant Huawei and threatens the countries that haven’t adopted its technology with economic retaliation. Washington considers the Huawei-led 5G technology a monster, a fallacy that is mocked at both in the west and at the MSC. People feel confused and bewildered because what Washington is preaching is truly beyond reason.
Americans say that Huawei’s 5G technology has a backdoor, but where is it? There is no evidence of the existence of such a backdoor, and the massive investigations conducted by Europe haven’t found anything either. On the other hand, we do have evidence at hand. There is evidence for America’s global surveillance and tapping as exposed by US fugitive former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden and the Australian Julian Assange who founded WikiLeaks. Has the US given any explanations for that?
The US has been so brazen in its surveillance and tapping operations that the sky's the limit for it. Recently western media revealed a hacker plan of the US government, which controls a Swiss company's encoding devices to spy on other countries. It has also been eavesdropping on Germany, the place where the MSC is held, and on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone conversations for more than a decade. Despite the iron-clad evidences proving that the US is spying on the whole world, it still plays victim to surveillance. How ridiculous and outrageous!
While Washington is constantly trumpeting about the “China threat”, China has never ever posed any threat to the US. The National People’s Congress, the top legislative body of China, has never passed a motion on the internal affairs of the US, but American congress has over and again passed motions interfering in China’s internal affairs, including Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang.
China has never sent its warships and aircraft to the American coast and surrounding areas, but American warships and aircraft have constantly come to China’s doorstep to flex muscles.
China has opened its gate to welcome American enterprises, but the US has spared no effort to suppress Chinese ones. These are not trumped-up theories, but stark facts. Who is the threat and who is the victim? China never threatens the US. It’s always the other way around.
Exaggerated and sensational remarks only work with children. The representatives at MSC didn’t buy what the Americans said. Risking the ire of US Secretary of State MikePompeo, French President Emmanuel Macron argued that Europe should cease being “the United States’ junior partner”. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier also pointed out blankly at the conference that America’s “great again” is at the expense of its closest allies.
(The author is Major General Jin Yinan，professor under the PLA National Defense University who majors in national security strategy, international conflict and crisis management.)
