Biden changes his tune on China
Change of heart.
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Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in 2014 that then-Vice President Joe Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
Truer words ne’er been spoken.
Biden, now president, cautioned this week that China threatens to overtake the United States in terms of economic and geopolitical dominance, a startling admission that comes after he assured voters in 2019 of the exact opposite.
“Last night, I was on the phone for two straight hours with Xi Jinping,” the president told reporters Thursday, referring to his call with the Chinese dictator. “They’re investing billions of dollars in dealing with a whole range of issues that deal with transportation, the environment, and a whole range of other things. So, we just have to step up.”
Biden added, “We don't get moving, they're going to eat our lunch.”
Love him or hate him, but one positive thing that can be said about former President Donald Trump is that he has been both correct and consistent about the danger China poses to the U.S. Indeed, Trump has been sounding the alarm since at least the mid-1980s.
Speaking of consistency, compare President Biden to candidate Biden and see if you can spot the difference.
In 2019, during a campaign stop in Iowa City, Biden downplayed concerns that China may surpass the U.S. on the world stage, claiming there’s not a “single solitary” leader who would trade America’s problems for China’s.
“China is going to eat our lunch?” Biden said dismissively. “Come on, man.”
He even used the same idiom!
Biden continued, saying China is too busy dealing with its own problems, including disputes in the “China Sea” (he meant to say the “South China Sea”) and the “mountains ... in the west” (it is still not clear what he meant by this).
“They can’t figure out how they’re going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system,” he said. “I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.”
Imagine having served as vice president and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and still saying with a straight face that China is “not competition for us.”
Between its efforts to build a global coalition, its shenanigans with currency manipulation, its stranglehold on corrupt international institutions, and its stealing of U.S. national security secrets and intellectual property, all while boasting of a seemingly unlimited supply of slave labor, China is absolutely a fierce and dangerous competitor. The U.S. observes basic human rights. It observes and enforces strict environmental protections. China is unencumbered by such moral considerations. Indeed, China just hums right along, pumping out cheap goods at unprecedented rates, all while having the highest pollution output of any country in the world. China is hell-bent on global hegemony, and it’s not accountable to the same standards and ethics observed by the U.S. Yet, Biden actually told people as recently as 2019 that China is not “competition for us.”
Only a Washington swamp creature with a comically bad record on foreign policy would say such a wrongheaded thing.
Biden is a 78-year-old man, one with decades of access to national security briefings and intelligence. And he is just now figuring out that China is a few degrees away from “eating our lunch”?
As Biden himself would say: Come on, man.