Chinese President Xi Jinping.
SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden warned lawmakers Thursday that China is aggressively overtaking the United States in terms of infrastructure.
“They invest a lot of money, invest billions of dollars and deal with a whole range of issues related to transportation, the environment and a whole range of other things,” Biden told a bipartisan group of senators he met. in the oval office.
“They have a major new initiative in the railway field and they already have a railway that runs easily 225 miles per hour,” he said, adding that he spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday for two hours. “They want you to know, if we don’t move, they’ll eat our lunch,” Biden said after meeting with members of the environment and public works committee.
“We just need to step up. And so what I would like to talk to these people about – because they are the key committee – is how we start this. We have presented what I think we should do,” he added. the president.
The phone call with Xi and the meeting with lawmakers come as the new US administration works to address human rights violations and fix trade relations with the world’s second-largest economy.
Last week, during an address to the State Department, Biden said he would work more closely with the Allies to turn against Beijing.
“We will face China’s economic abuses,” Biden said, describing Beijing as “America’s most serious competitor.”
Tensions between Beijing and Washington, the world’s two largest economies, have risen under the Trump administration, which has escalated a trade war and worked to ban Chinese technology companies from doing business in the United States.
In an interview with CBS, Biden said his administration is ready 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 at the Pentagon on Wednesday, a reporter asked Biden if he had any interest in punishing China over the nation’s lack of transparency regarding Covid-19’s outbreak last year.
“I’m interested in getting 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 hold China accountable for a number of issues, including human rights abuses.
Blinken also called on Beijing to condemn the recent military coup in Myanmar.