U.S. President Joe Biden has promised to invest heavily in infrastructure and new technologies to prevent China from outstripping the United States to become the most powerful country in the world.
“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,” according to Biden, as quoted by Reuters.
“That’s not going to happen on my watch because the United States is going to continue to grow,” he added.
In an apparent dig at Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden said: “He’s (Xi’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-complex world.”
He said he made it clear to Xi that while the U.S. is not looking for a confrontation, it would insist on China abiding by international rules on fair competition, fair trade, and human rights.
“As long as you and your country continue to so blatantly violate human rights, we are going to continue, in an unrelenting way, to call it to the attention of the world, and make it clear what’s happening. And he understood that” Biden said, recounting his two-hour conversation with Xi soon after taking office.
Biden said he would also work with U.S. allies to hold China accountable for its actions on Taiwan, Hong Kong, the South China Sea, and its Uighur minority.
Failing to do so would undermine America’s credibility, he noted.
Biden also promised greater U.S. investment in new technologies, such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence, and revealed plans to scale up investment in research and technology development from 0.7 percent to 2 percent of GDP, as previously recorded in the 1960s.
