BEIJING -- A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said Thursday the "China scare and paranoia" is an illness that can be cured through abandoning zero-sum cold war mentality and upholding equality, mutual respect, openness as well as inclusiveness.

Spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the remarks at a press briefing in response to two scholars' recent articles.

James Curran said in his article that the "China threat" rhetoric has now morphed into a classic red scare but also a paranoid syndrome, and that the China debate in Australia is close to losing all sense of rationality and proportion. Fareed Zakaria wrote in his article "The New China Scare" that today's China is a remarkably responsible nation on the geopolitical and military front.

Hailing the objective attitudes and insight of the two scholars, Hua said some western politicians and media seem to be infected with the illness of "China threat and paranoia," always smearing China and distorting right and wrong.

"This phenomenon, after all, is due to their wrong view of China," she said, adding that China has never initiated a single war, never interfered in other countries' internal affairs, never seized other countries' territories, and never broken international rules and order.

China is a large country. Yet, the size of a country has no necessary connection with whether it is a threat, Hua said.