China focuses on Florida apartment collapse as disaster strikes at home

Ryan Haas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution on China, said he was surprised by how insensitive senior Chinese officials were in their statements about the Surfside disaster. He said that after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Chinese leaders were among the first to offer condolences to the United States. He added that the reaction of Hua and others appeared to reflect the country’s broader shift to a more aggressive foreign policy.