Cold War mentality burns for 60 Minutes

Despite his candidness, United States Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns' interview with CBS' 60 Minutes, which aired on Friday, offered little that was fresh.

Burns has made good use of the past two years since he came to China to cultivate a friendly and open image. But as the interview revealed, the veteran US diplomat, who has served both Republican and Democratic administrations, still harbors a Cold War mentality, a defining feature of the China hawks who inhabit Washington.

He echoed their typical scaremongering, claiming that China, which has repeatedly stressed otherwise, wants to overtake the United States as the dominant country globally. Ringing a fearful alarm, Burns told Lesley Stahl, a reporter of the CBS News program, "We don't want that to happen. We don't want to live in a world where the Chinese are the dominant country".