http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/as...ina/index.html
China slams Bush on eve of poll
BEIJING, China -- In a hard-hitting commentary on the eve of U.S. elections, China has slammed the Bush administration, saying it is trying to rule the world by force.
Writing in the state newspaper China Daily, Vice Premier Qian Qichen said "the philosophy of the 'Bush Doctrine' is in essence force. It advocates the United States should rule over the whole world with overwhelming force, military force in particular."
The damning commentary from a top official in a nation that America views as a key anti-terror ally is a departure from Beijing's past refusal to comment on U.S. presidential candidates.
It is unclear what prompted the attack.
Chinese officials have refused for weeks to comment on the presidential campaign or on the positions of Bush and his main challenger, Democratic Senator John Kerry.
The commentary in the English-language paper did not mention Kerry, but it is being seen as close as possible to a position on the U.S. election as Beijing has come.
Growing in economic and political influence on the world stage, China has repeatedly expressed its aversion to Bush's unilateralist tendencies and sided with France and Germany in opposition to the Iraq war.
Slamming Bush's policy of creating an "axis of evil" and following pre-emptive strategies in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on America, Qian said Washington had destroyed the anti-terror coalition, widened the rift between Europe and the United States and worsened conflicts.
"Washington opened a Pandora's box, intensifying intermingled conflicts, such as ethnic and religious ones," Qian, one of the main architects of China's foreign policy, wrote.
Qian stressed that Beijing is also worried about Washington's heightened presence in Central and South Asia and is concerned that it may threaten China's ambitions to be the region's dominant military power.
As Washington goes after terrorists, and the so-called "rogue" or "failed" states that supported them, it has extended its reach into the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, taking it far beyond the scope of self-defence, he argued.
The invasion of Iraq "has made the United States even more unpopular in the international community than its war in Vietnam," he added.
China has supported the U.S.-led war on terror, but is wary of Bush's intentions.
Qian, who was foreign minister for more than a decade in the late 1980s and early 1990s and is credited with breaking China out of diplomatic isolation after the crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, said the United States bought the trouble onto itself.
The U.S. predicament in Iraq "serves as another example that when a country's superiority psychology inflates beyond its real capability, a lot of trouble can be caused," Qian said.
"But the troubles and disasters the United States has met do not stem from threats by others, but from its own cocksureness and arrogance."
'More hatred'
Referring to the war in Iraq, the vice premier said Bush's policy has simply worked to stoke more Muslim hatred around the world.
"Mounting hostile sentiments among the Muslim world towards the United States following the war have already helped the al Qaeda terrorist network recruit more followers and suicide martyrs," he wrote.
"Instead of dropping, the number of terrorist activities throughout the world is now on the increase."
In Iraq, the United States is far from winning peace for itself and the Arab country, he added.
He argued that many analysts said the Bush administration did not objectively and clearly assess challenges and difficulties facing it when it applied the pre-emptive strategy, and warned of more trouble ahead.
"Both history and practices of 'the myth of empires' have demonstrated that the pre-emptive strategy will bring the Bush administration an outcome that it is most unwilling to see, that is, absolute insecurity of the 'American Empire' and its demise because of expansion it cannot cope with," Qian said.
While U.S.-Chinese relations have improved under Bush's rule, ties have been strained by disputes over trade and Washington's refusal to send home Chinese Muslim detainees from the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Analysts have told Reuters news agency that China has a slight preference for the incumbent in the U.S. election, realizing that U.S. policy towards China has changed little from administration to administration.
