President Biden has vowed to take a different approach than Trump did during his presidency when it comes to dealing with China.
Dubbing Chinese President Xi Jinping “bright” and “tough,” the 46th US President insisted that the PRC leader “doesn’t have a democratic bone in his body.”
Despite the differences between the two world leaders and the nations they represent, Biden claimed there is no need for conflict as he promised to do things differently than Trump.
“He’s very bright. He’s very tough. He doesn’t have – and I don’t mean it as a criticism, just the reality – he doesn’t have a democratic, small-D, bone in his body,” he said in an interview with CBS.
“I’ve said to him all along, that we need not have a conflict. But there’s going to be extreme competition and I’m not going to do it the way that he knows. And that’s because he’s sending signals as well. I’m not going to do it the way Trump did. We’re going to focus on international rules of the road.”
While Biden admitted he hasn’t managed to talk to President Jinping following his inauguration, he claimed to have already spent more time with him than other world leaders.
“We haven’t had occasion to talk to him yet,” the US president said.
“There’s no reason not to call him. I probably spent more time with Xi Jinping, I’m told, than any world leader has because I had 24, 25 hours of private meetings with him when I was vice president. [I] traveled 17,000 miles with him. I know him pretty well.”
While Biden didn’t get the chance to speak to Jinping yet, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly called China’s Yang Jiechi, the Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, to discuss some pressing issues on Friday.
According to State Department spokesperson Ned Price, Blinken “stressed the United States will continue to stand up for human rights and democratic values, including in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, and pressed China to join the international community in condemning the military coup” that took place in Burma after the military arrested elected officials.
He reportedly also “reaffirmed that the United States will work together with its allies and partners in defense of our shared values and interests to hold the PRC accountable for its efforts to threaten stability in the Indo-Pacific, including across the Taiwan Strait, and its undermining of the rules-based international system.
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