BEIJING (AP) — China on Sunday denounced U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for calling the Asian country a threat, accusing him of touting a Cold War mentality as tensions between Washington and Beijing further escalate.

The foreign ministry said Hegseth vilified Beijing with defamatory allegations the previous day at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a global security conference. The statement also accused the United States of inciting conflict and confrontation in the region.

“Hegseth deliberately ignored the call for peace and development by countries in the region, and instead touted the Cold War mentality for bloc confrontation,” it said, referring to the post-World War II rivalry between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union.

“No country in the world deserves to be called a hegemonic power other than the U.S. itself,” it said, alleging that Washington is also undermining peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific.

Hegseth said in Singapore on Saturday that Washington will bolster its defenses overseas to counter what the Pentagon sees as rapidly developing threats by Beijing, particularly in its aggressive stance toward Taiwan.

China’s army “is rehearsing for the real deal,” Hegseth said. “We are not going to sugarcoat it — the threat China poses is real. And it could be imminent.”

A ‘provocation’ by Hegseth

The Chinese statement said the matter of Taiwan is China’s internal affair and that the U.S. should “never play with fire” with it. The statement also alleged Washington had deployed offensive weaponry in the South China Sea, was “stoking flames and creating tensions in the Asia-Pacific” and “turning the region into a powder keg.”

Spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang of China’s defense ministry called Hegseth’s comments a provocation and said they distorted China’s policy positions.

The U.S. and China had reached a deal last month to cut U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs from 145% to 30% for 90 days, creating time for negotiators from both sides to reach a more substantive agreement. China also reduced its taxes on U.S. goods from 125% to 10%.

But it’s uncertain if a trade war truce will last. Trump in a social media post on Friday said he would no longer be “nice” with China when it comes to trade and accused Beijing of breaking an unspecified agreement with the U.S.

Tensions escalated anew after the U.S. said on Wednesday it would start revoking visas for Chinese students studying there.

The matter of the Philippines

At the Singapore forum on Sunday, Philippines Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro scoffed at the idea that the U.S. was the problem.

The Philippines has been involved in increasingly violent clashes with China over competing claims in the South China Sea. Teodoro said what the Chinese government saw as fair might be contrary to the norms accepted by the rest of the world.

The Chinese Embassy in Singapore in separate Facebook posts described Teodoro’s remarks as “groundless accusations” and argued that the South China Sea Islands are China’s inherent territories.

The “troublemaker” is not China, it said, and cited what it said were recent illegal intrusions by the Philippines into the waters adjacent to two reefs.

“Some outside power” was posing the biggest threat to peace with the deployment of offensive weapons and roping in allies for frequent military drills, it said, without naming anyone.

“Which country is coercing and bullying others, and instigating conflicts and confrontation in the South China Sea? The answer is clear to all,” it said.

And then there was Macron

Separately, the Chinese Embassy in Singapore on Saturday criticized attempts to link the issue of Taiwan with that of the war in Ukraine after French President Emmanuel Macron warned of a dangerous double standard in focusing on a potential conflict with China at the cost of abandoning Ukraine.

The embassy did not name Macron in its post on Facebook, but the post included a photo showing the French president at the Singapore forum.

“If one tries to denounce ‘double standards’ through the lens of a double standard, the only result we can get is still double standard,” it said.

China, which usually sends its defense minister to the Shangri-La forum, this time sent a lower-level delegation led by Maj. Gen. Hu Gangfeng, the vice president of the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University.