US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday the United States was not seeking conflict with a rising China but urged emerging powers to act more ‘constructively’ in the world.
As academics in China and elsewhere increasingly speak of US decline, Clinton offered a robust defense of the United States and said it still had the military power, innovative companies and core values to make it ‘exceptional.’
But addressing aspiring military leaders at the US naval academy, Clinton said bluntly that 2012 ‘is not 1912, when friction between a declining Britain and a rising Germany set the stage for global conflict.’
‘We are not seeking new enemies. Today’s China is not the Soviet Union. We are not on the brink of a new Cold War in Asia,’ Clinton told the academy in Annapolis, Maryland.