Beijing slams new US congressional committee
China on Wednesday lashed out at a new US House committee dedicated to countering Beijing, demanding its members "discard their ideological bias and zero-sum Cold War mentality." The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party must "view China and China-US relations in an objective and rational light," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said at a daily briefing. "We demand the relevant US institutions and individuals discard their ideological bias and zero-sum Cold War mentality," she said. They must "stop framing China as a threat by quoting disinformation, stop denigrating the Communist Party of China and stop trying to score political points at the expense of China-US relations." The committee began its work Tuesday with a primetime hearing in which its chairman called on lawmakers to act with urgency, framing the competition between China and the US as "an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century." Meanwhile, Beijing said a ban on the use of TikTok by official European Union institutions will harm business confidence in Europe. In the latest salvo in the battle over the Chinese-owned video sharing app, the European Parliament, the European Commission and the EU Council have banned TikTok from being installed on official devices. That follows similar actions taken by the US federal government, Congress and more than half of the 50 US states. Canada has also banned it from government devices. "The EU claims to be the most open market in the world, but recently it has been taking restrictive measures and unreasonably suppressing other countries’ companies on the grounds of national security," Mao said at the daily briefing. "This will dampen the international community’s confidence in the business environment in the EU," she said. "The EU should match its words with deeds, respect the market economy and fair competition, stop overstretching and abusing the concept of national security and provide an open, fair, transparent and non-discriminatory business environment for all companies." EU staffers are required to delete TikTok from devices that they use for professional business by March 15. (AP)