China has protested to the United States against "vilifying" remarks made by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the foreign ministry said on Sunday, while accusing it of deliberately ignoring calls for peace from regional nations.

China lodged a protest over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s speech at a defense forum in Singapore on Saturday, even as Beijing chose not to send its top military diplomat to the annual event.

The flurry of punitive measures taken against China by the Trump administration over the last few days was prompted by a belief among US officials that China has failed to live up to commitments it made in trade talks earlier this month,

Bitcoin fell 5% from its Thursday high after President Donald Trump accused China of violating the terms of a tariff truce from earlier this month. Trump took to Truth Social on Friday to assert that China was breaking the rules of a deal in which the two nations agreed to roll back most tariffs on each other’s goods.