WASHINGTON – President Biden on Thursday warned that the US would have to ‘act’ and correct its ill-fated infrastructure or be left behind by an economically prosperous China, which ‘will eat our lunch’.
“Last night, I was on the phone with Xi Jinping for two hours straight,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office after his first call with the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party.
The president described the call as a “good conversation” and expressed concern about the growing rivalry between Washington and Beijing for global domination, saying the US was deteriorating.
“If we do not move, they will eat our lunch,” Biden said. “They have important, big new initiatives in the field of railways and they already have railways that easily go 225 km / h.”
The shifting relationship between America and China poses one of the biggest foreign policy challenges for Biden’s presidency and comes as China seeks to increase its influence overseas with its enormous “Belt and Road Initiative” that offers infrastructure loans to poor countries.
The Trump administration has taken a tough approach to Beijing, slamming Chinese-produced goods at steep rates and promising to return to a period of American prosperity.
Speaking about China’s growing economic power during a meeting with Democratic senators on investing in America’s infrastructure, Biden said he had instructed them to start exploring how the US could fight back.
The president said the US should reflect Beijing’s efforts in new technologies such as electric motors.
“They work very hard to do what I think we are going to have to do,” he said.
“They are investing billions of dollars on a whole range of issues related to transport, the environment and a whole range of other things, so we just have to act,” he said.
The president also revealed during his first speech in the Pentagon on Wednesday that a new task force from the Department of Defense will examine the military stance of the US and China and its “growing challenges”.
