Biden Urges US Allies To Prepare For Stiff Strategic Competition With China

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th February, 2021) US President Joe Biden in his first major address to a foreign audience on Friday urged American allies to prepare for a stiff long-term strategic competition with China.

"We must prepare together for a long-term strategic competition with China... How the United States, Europe and Asia work together to secure the peace and defend our shared values and advance our prosperity across the Pacific will be among the most consequential efforts we undertake," Biden said in his speech at the Munich Security Conference. "Competition with China is going to be stiff."

Biden said he expects and welcomes such competition because of the efforts it took to construct the international system.

"I believe in the global system Europe and the United States together with our allies in the Indo-Pacific worked so hard to build over the last 70 years," he said.

Biden said the US together with its allies have to push back against the Chinese government's economic abuses and cohesion to undercut the foundations of the international economic system.

"Everyone must play by the same rules," he said. "US and European companies are required to publicly disclose corporate governance structures and abide by rules to deter corruption and monopolistic practices. Chinese companies should be held at the same standard."

Biden specifically called for shaping global norms of behavior in cyberspace, rules to advance artificial intelligence and biotechnology so that they are used "to lift people up, not used to pin them down."

Although US-Chinese relations fell to new lows under the Trump administration, Biden has vowed to be even tougher on Beijing than his predecessor. Biden in a tense call with his Chinese counterpart last week warned Beijing that the US was concerned with its activities in the Indo-Pacific, human rights abuses, and unfair trade practices. Chinese officials have repeatedly denied all of these allegations.