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Starkly divergent views of the US under Donald Trump and Xi Jinping’s China came into focus in Washington on Tuesday, when a lawmaker said Beijing was part of an “axis of evil” and a Chinese academic suggested Trump was trying to carve up the world to the detriment of America’s allies.
Delivering a keynote address at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, US congressman Rob Wittman, vice-chair of the influential House Armed Services Committee, said the American belief in the rule of law was among principles that the US has “in common with other nations around the world”.
“There’s a big contrast between the United States and our allies and China, Russia, North Korea and Iran,” the Virginia Republican said. “That is a building axis of evil. The same thing is emerging today, as we saw in 1938 and we ought to be very, very mindful of that.”
Wittman, who also serves as chairman of the House subcommittee on tactical air and land forces, called for cooperation with allies in a range of military fronts, including shipbuilding and critical minerals supply, to match the defence industrial base that China has built up under Xi.
Wittman’s usage of the term “axis of evil” echoed testimony before the House Armed Services Committee last year by retired Admiral John Aquilino, then the commander of US forces in the Indo-Pacific, underscoring the degree to which Washington’s military establishment sees Beijing as a grave threat to US interests.
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