WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden says China is committed to “extreme competition” from the United States under his administration, but that the new relationship it wants to establish should not be conflicting.
In an interview on Sunday, Biden acknowledged that he has not yet spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping since his inauguration on January 20, but noted that the two leaders had met many times when the two men were serving their countries as vice president.
“I know him pretty well,” Biden said in an excerpt from CBS’s “Face the Nation” interview on Sunday.
When they talk, they’ll have “a lot to talk about,” Biden said.
It seems that Biden is concentrating his initial telephone diplomacy on the allies of the United States. So far he has spoken with leaders in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Australia and the NATO Secretary General.
He also worked in a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In the interview, Biden described Xi as “very bright” and “very tough,” but without “a small, democratic D, with bones in his body.”
Shortly after Biden succeeded President Donald Trump to the White House, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry said that “after such a difficult and extraordinary time, both the Chinese and American people deserve a better future “. Beijing welcomed the Biden administration’s decision to remain with the World Health Organization and return to the Paris climate agreement.
However, the new administration is unlikely to significantly change U.S. policies on trade, Taiwan, human rights, and the South China Sea that have infuriated Xi’s increasingly assertive government.
Biden, in the interview recorded on Friday, said he told Xi “all the time, we shouldn’t have any conflict.” But, Biden added, there will be “extreme competition. And I won’t do it the way he knows. And that’s because it also sends signals.”
Biden said he will not pursue U.S.-China relations in the same way that Trump did, but will focus on “international rules of the road.”