It seems that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is unable to deliver a speech without directing groundless charges against China, even when the occasion fails to provide any context.

His China-bashing vaudeville at the Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday was a case in point.

Apart from implying that Iowa farmers are indebted to the US president for helping them secure orders from China, the top US diplomat repeated one of his favorite accusations of the moment — Beijing conducts mass abortion and sterilization on the Muslim population in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

He never bothers to inform his audience that the horrible story he peddles is from a baseless report published late last month by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, a think tank founded in 1984 with funding related to the Reagan administration. It claims its mission today is to inform and educate policymakers in the United States about events and trends that "it regards" as being of strategic importance to the country. Even if those events are fictitious.

Pompeo's willingness to be a megaphone for repeating such lies offers a vivid example that whenever the US tries to make other countries a sacrifice on the altar of human rights, freedom and democracy, it becomes headstrong and runs roughshod over the very values it claims to be defending.

Considering the scale and intensity of the campaigns with which it is targeting China, this is only the latest example showing that the US is intent on putting some fresh alcohol in its old vodka bottle. The purpose is to form an anti-China rally.

In doing so, Washington clearly feels no qualms about subduing the whole global system, and destroying the cooperation and mutual trust that are the foundations of major power relations.

But today's world is drastically different from the one during the Cold War, and although the US now regards China as a foe comparable to the Soviet Union, there are fundamental differences between the two.

Dragging the world into a new Cold War will unavoidably have far more consequences than expected, as China is the world's second-largest economy and largest trade partner of more than 100 countries. The US cannot hurt China so much as it intends without hurting the world, itself included.

As Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Friday in a telephone call with his Russian counterpart, the US is actually isolating itself with its unilateralism and hegemonism.

China has remained calm and exercised considerable restraint in the face of the continuous provocations and overt containment efforts of the US. This is because it firmly believes that peace, cooperation and development remain the call of the times.

Countries today are no longer divided as ideologically as the US tries to portray, but rather in whether they heed the call of the times or not.

While US politicians are trying to mire China in a new Cold War, China remains steadfast in promoting cooperation with the world and promoting common development.

Other countries should indeed make a choice, not between the US and China, but between confrontation and cooperation.