President of China, Xi Jinping.
SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden warned lawmakers Thursday that China is aggressively outpacing the United States in infrastructure.
“They invest a lot of money, invest billions of dollars, and deal with a whole host of issues related to transportation, the environment, and a whole host of other things,” Biden told a bipartisan group of senators. with whom he met in the Oval Office.
“They have a major new initiative on rail and they already have rail that goes 225 miles per hour with ease,” he explained, adding that he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday for two hours. “They will, you know, if we don’t move, they’ll eat our lunch,” Biden said after the meeting with members of the Environment and Public Works committee.
“We just need to take a more intense step. And so what I’d like to talk to these people about (since they’re the key committee) is how we start this. I’ve outlined what I think we should do.” added the president.
The phone call with Xi and the meeting with lawmakers come as the new U.S. administration works to address human rights abuses and repair trade relations with the world’s second-largest economy.
Last week, during a State Department speech, Biden said he would work more closely with allies in order to launch against Beijing.
“We will face China’s economic abuses,” said Biden, who described Beijing as “America’s most serious competitor.”
Tension between Beijing and Washington, the world’s two largest economies, erupted under the Trump administration, which intensified a trade war and worked to ban Chinese technology companies from doing business in the U.S.
In an interview with CBS, Biden said his administration is prepared for “extreme competition” with China, but that his approach would be different from its predecessor.
“I will not do it as Trump did. We will focus on international road rules,” Biden said Sunday.
Following his remarks Wednesday at the Pentagon, a reporter asked Biden if he was interested in punishing China for the nation’s lack of transparency over the Covid-19 outbreak last year.
“I am interested in knowing all the facts,” Biden said, according to a group report.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke for the first time with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi over the weekend.
In a tense call, Blinken told Yang that the United States would ask China to explain a number of issues, including human rights violations.
Blinken also called on Beijing to condemn the recent military coup in Myanmar.