The efforts made by the US to restrain normal people-to-people exchanges are absurd and the US will only end up hurting itself, said China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang in response to a US investigation of Chinese American cancer researcher Wu Xifeng on Monday.
The MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston (File Photo: VCG)
Wu, a tenured professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, was investigated by the US National Institutes of Health and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and forced to resign, US media reported.
The Chinese spokesman said the US move obstructs people-to-people exchanges and scientific and technological cooperation between the two countries, which is also detrimental to the US interests.
Geng said that international cooperation is an inevitable requirement for the development of science and technology and people-to-people exchanges are an unstoppable trend.
“In recent years, some US individuals and agencies with a zero-sum game mindset and ill intentions to contain China’s development have adopted ridiculous excuses, such as 'spying,' to arbitrarily accuse and harass Chinese students and scholars in the US, making many framed-up and wrong cases and seriously affecting normal exchanges and cooperation,” said Geng.
Reprimanding the US as paranoid and discriminative, Geng said that more and more US researchers and media have raised their concerns over the unfounded and dangerous approach, warning it will ultimately damage the interests and image of the US itself.
In a meeting with his US counterpart in Japan’s Osaka late June, Chinese President Xi Jinping called on the United States to treat Chinese enterprises and students fairly to allow normal corporate cooperation and people-to-people exchanges between the two countries.
“The important consensus reached by the two heads of state has pointed out the direction,” Geng said. “We hope that the US side will stop the wrong actions of restraining and suppressing people-to-people exchanges between the two countries.”