BEIJING — China denounced U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday 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 region.

In Singapore, Hegseth said 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,” he told conferees. “We are not going to sugarcoat it — the threat China poses is real. And it could be imminent.”

The Chinese statement said the matter of Taiwan is China’s internal affair and the U.S. should “never play with fire” with it. It also alleged that 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 reached a deal last month to cut President Donald Trump’s tariffs from 145% to 30% for 90 days, creating time for negotiators to reach a more substantive agreement. China also reduced its taxes on U.S. goods from 125% to 10%.

But it’s uncertain whether a trade war truce will last. Trump said in a social media post Friday that 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 Wednesday that it would start revoking visas for Chinese students studying there.

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

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

In separate Facebook posts , the Chinese Embassy in Singapore 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.

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.

“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.