Remarks by Spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy on U.S. Official’s Statement about Zambia’s Debt Issue Related to China

2023-01-24 01:41

On 23rd January, the Embassy was asked by Bloomberg about U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen's statements about Zambia's debt issue related to China during her visit in Zambia. Below is the full text of the Embassy Spokesperson's response:

Assuming Secretary Yellen's statements about debt were correct, the best prospect of the debt issues outside the U.S. would be the U.S. Treasury Department solving the U.S.' own domestic debt problem, given how well she knows about facts, her professional capacities and her team's implementation ability.

According to news reports, the U.S. Treasury has begun taking“extraordinary measures”to meet its obligations, after the U.S. government hit its $31.4tn borrowing limit, Secretary Yellen said in a letter to U.S. congressional leaders on 13th January as she urged lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling sooner rather than later to avoid an unprecedented default and protect the credit of the United States. “If that (the federal government failing to make payments) happened, our borrowing costs would increase and every American would see that their borrowing costs would increase as well. A failure to make payments that are due would cause a recession in the U.S. economy and could cause a global financial crisis,”she said in an interview on 20th January.

Secretary Yellen's words and actions have eloquently revealed how and why the U.S.' catastrophic debt problem is emerging, which convinces the world to drop the previous assumption that her  statements about debt issues are correct. In fact, the biggest contribution that the U.S. can make to the debt issues outside the country is to act on responsible monetary policies, cope with its own debt problem, and stop sabotaging other sovereign countries'active efforts to solve their debt issues.

For Zambia's debt related to China, China has been active in co-chairing Zambia's Official Creditor's Committee under the G20 Common Framework and working hard with other parties to seek a sustainable solution in line with the principle of common actions and fair burden-sharing. China's efforts have made some positive progress. We look forward to U.S.' constructive role in the process. Even if the U.S. one day solves its debt problem, it is not qualified to make groundless accusations against or press for other countries out of selfish interests, because it cannot at all alleviate U.S.' tremendous responsibility for the reason of the world debt issues, let alone the fact the U.S.' domestic debt problem is now worsening the the world's economic and financial stability.

We do hope Ms. Yellen can manage to prevent the U.S. from defaulting on its obligations and protect the country's credit.


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