US President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event at Pullman Yards in Atlanta, Georgia, US on March 9. [Photo/Agencies]
In terms of its policy toward China, the Joe Biden administration has always said it seeks competition, not conflict. Yet what it has done recently regarding China serves only to belie that claim.
The latest example showing the Biden administration considers China a systemic rival of the United States that must be confronted using all possible means is its budget request for the 2025 fiscal year.
Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Richard Verma did not mince words when he said on Monday that the US must resort to "all the tools at our disposal" to outcompete China, and for that purpose the budget request includes $4 billion over five years in mandatory funding, including $2 billion to create a new international infrastructure fund to provide a credible, reliable alternative to Chinese infrastructure funding overseas. The other $2 billion is earmarked for "game-changing investments" to help "Indo-Pacific" countries push back against "predatory efforts", he said.
Both these goals are obviously aimed at compromising China's cooperative engagement with other countries that has been gaining momentum in recent years mainly thanks to the Belt and Road Initiative. The BRI has seen the building of infrastructure and energy networks connecting Asia with Africa and Europe through overland and maritime routes. Over the past more than 10 years, the initiative has contributed to the sound development of economic globalization and helped to address global development challenges.
With the aim of "outcompeting" Beijing, the Biden administration is actually seeking to pressure countries to choose sides between the US and China, and trying to reshape the international landscape into one that features only exclusion and confrontation. All this reflects the inability of many in the Biden administration and the political circle in Washington to relinquish the Cold War mentality and zero-sum mindset that deny them the ability to embrace the possibilities of a world in which the US is not always trying to prove it's the cock of the walk.
As Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in response to the US official's remarks, by claiming to "outcompete" others, what the US seeks is not healthy competition of becoming one's better self and making progress together, but a vicious one of trying to trip the other and recklessly gamble at the cost of the fundamental interests of the Chinese and US people, and even the future of humanity, which "will only push the two countries toward confrontation and conflict".
In yet another blow to the smooth development of Sino-US relations, the US' 2025 budget proposal seeks $100 million to help Taiwan strengthen cross-Strait "deterrence", the first time that such a specific request has been included in the budget. The US Department of State called the stand-alone request in the 2025 budget a "historic investment in Taiwan's security".
The move runs counter to the promises the US has repeatedly made that it does not support "Taiwan independence" and has no intention to use the island as a tool to seek advantages in the competition with China or to contain China. The military aid proposal regarding Taiwan is actually a time bomb that the Biden administration is planting as it blatantly violates the one-China principle and sends wrong signals to the secessionists on the island in their reckless pursuit of "Taiwan independence".
Beijing is firmly opposed to Washington developing any military ties with Taiwan and arming the island to help it resist the mainland's reunification efforts. The provocative step the US has taken, along with its budget proposal regarding Taiwan, will only make the Chinese mainland even more determined to take resolute measures to firmly safeguard the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
