US demonising China to build national purpose: Chinese diplomat

A top Chinese diplomat on Monday took a combative tone during rare face-to-face talks with a US counterpart, saying Washington's strategy of confrontation and cooperation with Beijing was a thinly veiled attempt to contain and suppress China.The China-US ties are in a stalemate, fundamentally because some Americans portray China as an "imaginary enemy", Chinese vice foreign minister, Xie Feng told deputy secretary of state, Wendy Sherman, the second-ranked US diplomat, during their meeting in Tianjin, a city some 100km from Beijing.The US' "competitive, collaborative and adversarial" rhetoric is a thinly veiled attempt to contain and suppress China – the real…