Handle disputes among countries with ‘dialogue and cooperation’: Xi at UNGA

TIL Desk/World/UN/ Amidst escalating tension in ties with the US, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday said that disputes among countries “need to be handled through dialogue and cooperation” and urged world leaders to eschew “confrontation and exclusion.”

Addressing the high-level 76th UN General assembly, President Xi, via a video link, said that the world needs to advocate peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom, which are the common values of humanity, and reject the practice of forming small circles or zero-sum games.

“Differences and problems among countries, hardly avoidable, need to be handled through dialogue and cooperation on the basis of equality and mutual respect. One country’s success does not have to mean another country’s failure, and the world is big enough to accommodate common development and progress of all countries,” he said.

Xi’s comments came hours after US President Joe Biden said he did not have any intention of starting a “new Cold War” with China. The US and China have been locked in a standoff fuelled by major disagreements on issues like trade, technology, Beijing’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea and human rights. Earlier this year, high-level talks between the Biden administration and Beijing were fraught with tension – with officials on both sides exchanging sharp rebukes in public.