If there was a silver lining in President Joe Biden’s Thursday press conference, it came in his lengthy discussion of the challenge posed by Communist China.
Most of Biden’s other answers were a mix of misdirection and malarkey, but much of his commentary on China was on target. We can only hope his actions will match his rhetoric.
Biden took more than eight and a half minutes in answering the questions about China. Again and again, he returned to two themes: first, that we face a contest between autocracy and democracy, and second, that “we’re not looking for confrontation, although we know there will be steep, steep competition.” (Emphasis added.)
That verbiage was well chosen. It set him up for the important point that with that “strong competition,” the United States will “insist that China play by the international rules.”
This aspiration is far more easily said than done, of course, but Biden actually did try to put some rhetorical meat on the bones. Granted, in some ways, he spent far too much time talking about ensuring that the U.S. must “invest” in “pure research … and science.” The problem was that he made it clear he specifically means government investment, which is hardly the most efficient means of improving economic output. Still, it is a welcome thing to hear a president focus on the need to compete with China in “medical research, cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, industries of the future, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotech,” and the like, rather than merely to try to “protect” us from China’s thriving efforts in those areas as if we are mere victims.
Biden’s next point was entirely welcome. In several ways, he emphasized that the entire free world, not just the U.S., should work in concert to keep China from bullying its way to untoward power. We “are going to re-establish our alliances,” he said, mentioning a phone conference he was about to have with “27 heads of state in Europe.” Also, he said the key regional alliance he called “the Quad,” meaning the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan, must “hold China accountable to the rules,” including in the South China Sea.
This is important. Unilateral face-offs with China could lead to a conflagration, whereas multilateral cooperation is more likely to make China doubt its ability to use its military might to deadly effect. Coming off a presidency that often shunned traditional alliances, this emphasis on concerted action is an improvement.
Additionally, Biden stressed the need to revise the American verbal emphasis on freedom and human rights, which is another area in which the previous administration fell short. While Biden must guard against a Jimmy Carter-like, fuzzy-headed pose of wishful thinking that ignores the equal importance of concrete power, Ronald Reagan showed that the weight of a publicly touted moral example can be an essential element of American diplomacy.
Biden claimed to have told Chinese president Xi Jinping that “as long as you and your country continues to so blatantly violate human rights, we are going to continue in an unrelenting way to call it to the attention of the world and make it clear, make it clear what’s happening.” If Biden actually does so, it will be terrific. In the press conference, he mentioned both China’s horrid treatment of the Uyghur minority and its violation of democracy in Hong Kong. Good job.
The upshot of all this, said Biden, is that “autocracy” must be resisted.
“That’s what’s at stake here,” he said. “We’ve got to prove democracy works.”
Using the right rhetoric, as he did, is a good start.
