China's Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai told CNN on Thursday that the China-U.S. meeting in Anchorage last week was "timely" and "helpful." 

"It certainly helped both sides to have a better understanding of the other. So I hope this will be the beginning of a long process of dialogue, communication and hopefully coordination between the two sides," Cui said in an interview with CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour. 

"As for China's development goal, we have our goal very clear. Our goal is to meet the growing aspiration of the Chinese people for a better life. Our goal is not to compete with or replace any other country. This is never our national strategy. Hopefully, people could have a better understanding of this," said the ambassador. 

Speaking of the long-standing competition between China and the U.S., Cui said: "We have no problem with open and fair competition. Actually we very much stand for that." 

Cui said that in the past few years, Western countries have unfairly discriminated against Chinese tech companies and detained Chinese executives, an apparent reference to Huawei's CFO Meng Wanzhou, adding that nationalism and protectionism have also been exhibited against international rules. 

"So in order to have open and fair competition, I think these past mistakes will have to be corrected first. Otherwise, there's no basis for us to engage in such a competition," Cui stressed. 

Amanpour showed him part of a CNN-produced segment purporting to depict "how China was behind the detention and separation of Uygur children who tried to flee Xinjiang to reunite with their parents in Italy." 

In response, Cui called the news organization's reporting 'immoral' and "fabricated". He denied claims of "genocide" against the Uygur Muslims in China, saying that some journalists go into the story with bias. 

"Let me tell you the basic facts about Xinjiang. Until very recently, the big threat to Xinjiang, to people of all ethnic groups was terrorist attacks… There was strong demand by the local people that the government had to do something to stop it. So this has been our priority, to stop the spread of terrorist attacks," Cui said. 

"But what we did was not start a war there. We did not use missiles or drones. We set up efforts for education and training, helping people to learn more about the law, to acquire good skills to improve their lives, find good jobs. All this has made a huge difference," he continued. 

"There has been no single terrorist attack in the last few years. In terms of the population, the Uygur population has more than doubled in the last four decades. So how can people talk about the so-called genocide?" Cui asked the CNN anchor