BEIJING (AP) — China’s foreign minister issues a veiled warning to America New Secretary of State: Behave.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi conveyed the message in a phone call Friday, their first conversation since Confirmation of Marco Rubio as President Donald Trump’s top diplomat four days earlier.
“I hope you will act accordingly,” Wang told Rubio, according to a Foreign Ministry statement, employing a Chinese phrase typically used by a teacher or boss warning a student or employee to behave and be responsible of his actions.
The short sentence appeared aimed at Rubio’s vocal criticism of China and its human rights record while he was a U.S. senator, which prompted the Chinese government to put sanctions on him twice in 2020.
It can be translated in various ways – in the past the Foreign Office has used “do the right thing” and “be very careful about what they say or do” rather than “act on it”.
The imprecision allows the phrase to express an expectation and dispense a veiled warning, while maintaining the civility needed for further diplomatic engagement, said Zichen Wang, a researcher at the Center for China and Globalization, a Chinese think tank.
“What might seem confusing, is therefore an intended effect coming from traditional Chinese wisdom and classical speech practice,” said Wang, who is currently in a mid-career master’s program at the University of Princeton.
Rubio, during his confirmation hearing, cited the importance of looking to ethnic Chinese to understand the words of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
“Don’t read the English translation that they published because the English translation is never right,” he said.
A U.S. statement on the phone call did not mention the phrase. It said Rubio told Wang that the Trump administration would advance U.S. interests in its relationship with China and expressed “grave concern about China’s coercive actions against Taiwan and in the South China Sea.”
Wang was foreign minister in 2020 when China slapped sanctions on Rubio in July and August, Firstly in response to American sanctions on Chinese officials for a crackdown on the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region, then on what she saw as outside interference in Hong Kong.
The sanctions include a ban on travel to China, and although the Chinese government has indicated it will engage with Rubio as secretary of state, it has not explicitly said whether that would allow him to visit the country for interviews.
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Associated Press writers Didi Tang and Fu Ting in Washington contributed to this report.
