Biden Warns: China Outpacing The U.S.

EDITOR NOTE: Biden recently warned a group of bi-partisan senators last week that China will “eat our lunch” if American fails to compete aggressively with our rival nation. Interestingly, Biden talked about “infrastructure,” and the fact that China is developing a high-speed rail across the country; something we’re not close to implementing ourselves. China is closing in on us from several angles, not the least its attack on the reserve status of our currency, its accumulation of gold to further bolster the status of the yuan, and the internationalization of the yuan via digital currency and its new payment system, one poised to outflank the long-standing SWIFT system. Amid all of these “offensive maneuvers,” don’t you think that the matter of infrastructure is something of a distraction to the real issues going on? Biden views China from the angle of “extreme competition,” yet he wants to follow the “international rules of the road”--as relative consensus is able to constrain the most belligerent participants. In reality, the rules are defined by the strongest players. Many of our smaller rivals may break the rules. But with China’s formidable strength, it holds the privilege to rewrite them. 

President Joe Biden warned lawmakers Thursday that China is aggressively outpacing the United States on infrastructure.

“They’re investing a lot of money, they’re investing billions of dollars and dealing with a whole range of issues that relate to transportation, the environment and a whole range of other things,” Biden said he told a bipartisan group of senators whom he met with in the Oval Office.

“They have a major, major new initiative on rail and they already have rail that goes 225 miles an hour with ease,” he explained, adding that he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping for two hours on Wednesday. “They’re going to, you know, if we don’t get moving, they’re going to eat our lunch,” Biden said after the meeting with the members of the Environment and Public Works committee.

“We just have to step up. And so what I’d like to talk to these folks about — since they are the key committee — is how we begin this. I’ve laid out what I think we should be doing,” the president added.

The phone call with Xi and the meeting with lawmakers come as the new U.S. administration works to address human rights abuses and mend trade relations with the world’s second-largest economy.

Last week during an address at the State Department Biden said that he would work more closely with allies in order to mount pushback against Beijing.

“We will confront China’s economic abuses,” Biden said, describing Beijing as America’s “most serious competitor.”

The tension between Beijing and Washington, the world’s two largest economies, soared under the Trump administration, which escalated a trade war and worked to ban Chinese technology companies from doing business in the U.S.

In an interview with CBS, Biden said that his administration is ready for “extreme competition” with China but that his approach would be different from his predecessor’s.

“I’m not going to do it the way Trump did. We are going to focus on the international rules of the road,” Biden said Sunday.

After his remarks at the Pentagon on Wednesday, a reporter asked Biden whether he had any interest in punishing China over the nation’s lack of transparency about the Covid-19 outbreak last year.

“I’m interested in getting all the facts,” Biden said, according to a pool report.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken talked for the first time with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, over the weekend.

In a tense call, Blinken told Yang the U.S. would hold China to account for a slew of issues including human rights abuses.

Blinken also called on Beijing to condemn the recent military coup in Myanmar.

Originally posted on CNBC