China says US-Japan actions are stoking division
BEIJING — China hit back at the U.S.-Japan show of alliance during talks between President Joe Biden and Japan Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, calling it an “ironic attempt of stoking division.”
China said Suga and Biden’s news conference Friday, in which they issued a joint statement on shared values in democracy and human rights and aired concerns about China’s activities in the Indo-Pacific region, had gone “far beyond the scope of normal development of bilateral relations.”
“It cannot be more ironic that such attempt of stoking division and building blocs against other countries is put under the banner of ‘free and open,'” the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said in a statement Saturday.