President Biden vowed that he would not allow China to become the world’s
“leading” country during his first press conference on Thursday. His comments come as US-China tensions are soaring, and the two countries’ relationship is at its lowest point in decades.
“I see stiff competition with China,” Biden said. “China has an overall goal … to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world. That’s not going to happen on my watch, because United States is going to continue to grow and expand.”
President Biden spoke of his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who Biden got to know while both leaders were serving as vice presidents. “I spent hours upon hours with him alone with an interpreter,” Biden said. “He is very, very straightforward. Doesn’t have a democratic — with a small ‘D’ — bone in his body.”
Using Cold War-style language, Biden framed the situation on the world stage as a battle between democracy and autocracy, and compared Xi to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “He’s one of the guys, like Putin, who thinks that autocracy is the wave of the future and democracy can’t function in an ever — an ever-complex world,” he said.
“I predict to you, your children or grandchildren are going to be doing their doctoral thesis on the issue of who succeeded: autocracy or democracy? Because that is what is at stake, not just with China,” Biden told reporters.
While he’s taking a similar approach to China as President Trump, the Biden administration has been able to rally its European allies to take action against China. On Monday, the US, EU, UK, and Canada all announced sanctions on Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on the US’s European and NATO Allies to unite against Beijing in Brussels on Wednesday. The common talking point coming for US officials is that China threatens the US-led “rules-based order,” which means Washington sees Beijing as a threat to US global hegemony, something Biden made clear at his press conference.
China should become a leading country. There should be other countries doing the same thing as well. They should create a domino effect. Mexico should become a military and economic superpower. That would reduce legal as well as illegal immigration from Mexico to the US. Most Americans would not like the idea of Mexico becoming so prosperous even if they would not miss having so many immigrants from there, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff were great leaders of Brazil, too bad they couldn’t stay in power and turn Brazil into an economic and military superpower.
Biden’s explanation about why he sees China as a threat is illuminating and honest: they are overtaking the US and “it won’t happen” on his watch. What more insecure and immature explanation could he come up with? Yet, it is the truth. If China is a success, it is largely due to the US sponsorship in the WTO. Biden should be proud of the accomplishments of China instead of threatened by them. Unlike the US China has invested in its infrastructure instead of its state-of-the-art weaponry.
To say nothing of several wars in the Middle East, most waged for israel’s benefit.
“That’s not going to happen on my watch, because United States is going to continue to grow and expand.”
The magic money printer and the abrogation of constitutional rights.
Well, VP Cheney said that deficits don’t matter any more.
..THEN why are we taxed, Dick Cheney?
Multi-polarity, peaceful co-existence, is outside “the parameters of permissible discourse,” because it would obviate a large and most profitable fraction of the war economy.
some points on Biden–
>He claims that he’s not anti-China but yet he’s going to contain China, and then claims that his major emphasis will be on expanding the US economy focusing on technology and infrastructure, costing trillions. Meanwhile he’s sanctioning China as with Russia) for bogus claims of China malign activity. He’s all mixed up!
>The US under Biden is still focused on endless war and expanding the un-audited Pentagon budget. This includes continued military activity in Afghanistan, Syria and North Africa. China meanwhile is focused on expanding the effect of the 139-nation BRI with economic investments in many countries and on transportation.
>Biden has staffed his administration with Obama era warhawks at State and National Security and a feckless washed-up general as SecDef, which will guarantee a continued beating of the war drums and a wrong US foreign policy.
>Meanwhile China, plus Russia and Iran, will take advantage of all this Washington confusion to surpass and replace the US in the world. David Sanger: “China’s) pathway to power is building new networks rather than disrupting old ones… Their power arises not from their relatively small nuclear arsenal or their expanding stockpile of conventional weapons. Instead, it arises from their expanding economic might and how they use their government-subsidized technology to wire nations… Ultimately, it will come from how they use those networks to make other nations dependent on Chinese technology.”
>The Biden strategy of US-led democracies against China-led autocracies is bogus on the face of it, and many people in the world are onto its fallaciousness. The US versus Russia, China and Iran is really about a corporate-led administration against state-led corporate-controlled countries. There is no democracy in the US, no governance by the people, that’s obvious baloney that anyone can see. And it’s results that count, including a safe country with economic progress, most people see that too.
China is going nonstop to the top and Biden cannot do a damn thing about it…!
I agree. This is going to be the century in which the Eurasian landmass becomes a geographical unity. The US might have been able to compete but has wasted its resources on endless wars and foolish social spending.
Biden is on a roll. First he called Putin a “murderer”. Now he insults Jinping. What is his mission. Are Blinken and Abrams whispering in his ears?
…..a furlong to go and China leads by 12 lengths – jockey Biden just may have to go to the whip.
An oxygen tank might be more helpful.
Joao,
Actually two – one for the jockey and a bigger one for the wore-out horse.
Biden is right, that we’re seeing a struggle across the world between democracy and autocracy. But what he doesn’t realise is that in this struggle, both he and Xi Jinping represent autocracy.
In the same breath Biden says that the US is no safe harbour for haters.
Seems like the Dems, Nancy P, BLM and antifa are creating more “haters” everyday…or maybe the haters just don’t want to see their country trashed by a herd of ignorant, filthy swine.
China will never overtake the USA. Where is their RAP music? Their university diversity officers and transgender bathrooms?
There was a period between WW1 and WW2 when there was a chance that China might develop a more democratically tuned governance. That chance was eventually strangled by the Japanese invasion. However one cannot separate the Japanese invasion from the preceding invasions of China by the UK, Germany, and the USA. To a significant degree our governments between the two wars are co-responsible for China’s post-WW2 history. Mao’s uprising was not merely communist, it was infused with powerful patriotism and anti-colonialist sentiment.
Biden’s rants appear to me like a midget berating a giant that he became a giant. Anti-democratic governance is NOT the core of China’s emergence as the number one economic power in the world. That emergence is the work of the people of China which provided the labor and political will for China’s rise to the top. If Biden does not grasp the fact that he is not battling the communist government of China but the Chinese people we will end up either as losers or in a real war with China. Biden looks now like another sorcerer’s apprentice.
Biden is little more than a shuffling cadaver,
he only “knows” what they put in front of him to read,
even that with great difficulty.
And it’s going to get worse.
Were it not for the brutal invasion by Japan, the Communist Party would not have ascended. So, thank Japan for all of the years of Mao.
How soon the first armed conflict? Past generation showed Nixon dividing Mao’s China from Brezhnev’s Soviets. Today has too many opponents. The first cracks should show up in China & North Korea.. They can’t effectively maintain an universal embargo on North Korea while being on in-your-face anti mainland Chinese. If North Korea receives ships with donated Chinese food like last year, my observation will be proven right.
Mr. Potatohead speaks! Hahahaha!
The Shining Asylum-slash-Abattoir on the Hill, with senile puppet as front man for the real owner-savages.
Things will get worse … until finally the illusion of “American Exceptionalism”, gives way to reality, to a “new normal” of hunger and tyranny. Maybe, just maybe, when things get bad enough, the American people will find a way out.
Till then, the spectacle of the end of empire is dazzling.
The future belongs to China.