President Joe Biden said Tuesday that the United States was not seeking to distance itself from China but wanted an improved relationship, as he prepared for a highly anticipated summit with President Xi Jinping in San Francisco.
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President Joe Biden said ahead of his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping that the US was interested in helping China’s struggling economy — but not at the expense of American intellectual property.
“What we’re trying to do is change the relationship for the better,” Biden told reporters Tuesday at the White House, shortly before departing for San Francisco where he’s set to meet Xi on Wednesday. Biden said that he believed the Chinese people were “in trouble right now economically.”
“If the average citizen in China was able to have a decent paying job, that benefits them and benefits all of us,” he continued. “But I’m not going to continue to sustain the support for positions where if want to invest in China, we have to turn over all our trade secrets.”
Biden has frequently criticized China in recent months even as he has pursued a warming with Beijing, describing the country’s economy as a “ticking time bomb” and noting a declining GDP and aging population.
{{/usCountry}}Biden has frequently criticized China in recent months even as he has pursued a warming with Beijing, describing the country’s economy as a “ticking time bomb” and noting a declining GDP and aging population.
{{/usCountry}}On Tuesday, Biden said the US was not trying to decouple from China. The president said he hoped talks would yield the chance “to get back on a normal course of corresponding, being able to pick up the phone and talk to one another.” Biden said he also hoped to strike an agreement on military-to-military communication.
China suspended a pair of diplomatic channels — one enabling communications between ship and aircraft operators, and the other a series of regular coordination meetings between senior military officials – between the two countries last year, in protest over Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.
Beijing had warned Pelosi, the first sitting House Speaker in a quarter century to go to the island, against visiting the democracy. China views Taiwan as its territory to be retaken by force if necessary.