China's Foreign Ministry on Monday refuted recent remarks by high-ranking U.S. officials denigrating Chinese-made cars, noting they are creating a false narrative, and this clearly reflects Washington's practice of making economic and trade issues into ones of politics and security.

Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, made these remarks after U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a recent interview with U.S. media outlet MSNBC that "cars these days are like an iPhone on wheels… You connect your phone and you might receive the text message… Imagine a world with 3 million Chinese vehicles on the roads of America, and Beijing can turn them off at the same time."

Mao said that by that logic, shouldn't China be more worried about Washington's ability to get hundreds of millions of Apple phones of Chinese users to channel collected information back to the U.S., or even cause a blanket screen shutdown?

Hua Chunying, another Foreign Ministry spokesperson, on Sunday addressed Raimondo's remarks on X, saying that "cars are like iPhones on wheels? Beijing can turn off millions of Chinese vehicles on U.S. roads at the same time? Kindly remind @SecRaimondo that iPhones are American products. Were you suggesting that iPhones, Tesla and even Boeing... have been sending secret data back to the U.S. and could be shut down at any time by Washington?"