UNITED NATIONS (AP) – Four days before its communist government’s 70th birthday, China on Friday condemned protectionism and unilateralism as “major threats,” took not-entirely-subtle shots at U.S. economic policies and proudly pronounced itself “a country that is open and on the move.”
With Chinese President Xi Jinping not attending this year’s U.N. General Assembly, it fell to Foreign Minister Wang Yi to tell the story of the People’s Republic of China at the seven-decade mark. He did so with dispatch and style, plowing through a speech that outlined many of his country’s accomplishments, challenges, philosophies and international beefs.
He called China “an anchor of stability for world peace” and much more.
“Seventy years ago, China put an end to a period in modem history in which the country was torn apart and trampled upon. We stood up and became true masters of our country,” Wang said.
The current chapter for China, a culture thousands of years old, began on Oct. 1, 1949 when Mao Zedong stood at a microphone atop Tiananmen Square in Beijing and declared a new government in the nation his communist guerrillas took from Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists after a civil war.