China stressed Thursday it wanted to cooperate with the United States, in the wake of tensions between the two countries over Google, US arms sales to Taiwan and a host of trade issues.
"China is willing to cooperate with the US in a wide range of bilateral areas," foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters, in response to a question about US President Barack Obama's debut State of the Union address.
In his speech Wednesday, Obama expressed fears that other nations — including China — would outpace the United States unless it took action on its economy.
Ma said China had yet to fully review the speech, but noted that the idea of China as an economic threat did not "hold water".
"Both China and the US are responsible countries in the world," he said.
"Cooperation between the two is in the fundamental interest of both countries, and good for world peace, stability and prosperity."
The relatively positive comments came after high tensions between the two countries over Google's threat to leave China due to cyberattacks and censorship, which led to the United States questioning Beijing's vast system of web censorship.
The two nations have also clashed on climate change, trade issues, the yuan's value, US arms sales to Taiwan and a visit to the United States by the exiled Dalai Lama.
Just last week, Ma described US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's comments on Internet freedom as "harmful to China-US relations".
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