Remember your ‘roots’, China tells neighbours

“Europeans and Americans can’t distinguish between Chinese, Japanese and South Koreans,” says Wang Yi, director of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee. (AFP File Photo)


BEIJING: China’s top diplomat has called on South Korea and Japan to remember their “roots” and reject Western influences, in racially charged comments to officials from Seoul and Tokyo.

Speaking at a trilateral forum in the eastern city of Qingdao on Monday, Wang Yi — who is in charge of the ruling Communist Party’s foreign policy — said Western powers had deliberately “played up ideological differences between the countries”, state media reported.