China is preparing for confrontation of century - China scholar Holod

She said this on Espreso TV. 

“Xi Jinping spoke at the National People's Congress, and for the first time, he used critical rhetoric against the United States. He said that China is being comprehensively deterred, encircled, and suppressed, which is rhetoric we have never heard before. Now the narratives are changing. It is obvious that China is preparing for the confrontation of the century. The rapprochement between China and Russia, which we have been discussing in recent weeks, has been called a global strategic balance by Beijing,” the chairman of the board of the Ukrainian Association of Sinologists said. 

Vita Holod noted that China is building its own pole of influence, which it wants to lead, so it needs countries like Russia and Belarus. 

“If we look at US-China relations in general, we first analyze documents. There is a document called the Biden-Harris National Security Strategy, which was released in the United States last year, where China is not named as a threat, but as a competitor. But it says that China can influence the global order because it has the economic, technological, military, and other resources to do so. It is clear that the United States does not like this very much. Despite its ideological bias, the strategy states that relations between the people of the United States and China should remain friendly. By the way, Chinese documents contained a very interesting report by Tsinghua University on the threats to China as a country for 2023, and the Sino-US strategic rivalry is in the first place, followed by tensions in the Taiwan Strait,” the Chinese scholar noted.

• On March 13, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that China's military buildup is a cause for concern, as it is a systemic challenge to the world order.

• According to Reuters, Xi Jinping plans to visit Russia next week.