China has criticized U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe for asserting China threatens the existence of the U.S. with its push for military and economic superiority.
Because of China's ambitions, the U.S. must prepare for an "open-ended period of confrontation" with China - which was resolutely bent on world domination and propagating communism, Ratcliffe said.
China called the remarks incendiary and many others like them by Ratcliffe as a "concoction of lies."
China's foreign affairs representative Hua Chunying said Ratcliffe's claims in an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal was "just a sensational headline" and didn't present any real proof. "He just continued and repeated what is, I think another concoction of lies," she said.
"We hope that American politicians will respect the facts, stop making and selling fake news, stop fabricating and spreading political viruses and lies, and stop damaging Sino-U.S. relations, otherwise it will only further damage the credibility of the United States."
Earlier, the Chinese embassy in the U.S. said Ratcliffe's comments were "fact-distorting" and hypocritical and showed "the entrenched Cold War mindset and ideological prejudices of some people on the U.S. side."
U.S. political analysts said President Donald Trump had deliberately upended America's relationship with China to please his conservative political base and to lay the groundwork for a renewed presidential bid in 2024.
Trump will continue issuing executive orders and sanctions against China during the last weeks of his leadership.
This week, Trump is expected to sign into law a new bill passed by both Houses of the U.S. Congress preventing Chinese and other foreign companies from listing on U.S. stock exchanges if they don't fully comply with the country's tough auditing rules.
The Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act passed the House by unanimous voice vote Wednesday after being unanimously approved by the Senate in May.
The law targets companies from any country, but its sponsors intended it to hit Chinese companies listed in the U.S., such as e-commerce and internet giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and state-owned PetroChina Co. Ltd., Asia's largest oil and gas producer. It also specifically targets officials of the Communist Party of China.
The bill will require public companies to reveal if they're owned or controlled by a foreign government. It requires foreign issuers of securities using foreign accounting firms to disclose information related to any board members who are officials of the party and whether the articles of incorporation of the issuer contain any charter of the party.
