The United States should abandon its "wishful thinking about changing China" and stop pushing the two countries "to the brink of a new Cold War," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Sunday, trying to position Beijing as the grown-up in an increasingly fractious bilateral relationship.

US Vice President Mike Pence last week declared a new Cold War against China. America has now decisively stepped into the Thucydides Trap – the Ancient Greek historian’s thesis that a confrontation between an established and a rising power is almost always inevitable.