Allies around the world should brace for “stiff” competition with China for victory in “the race of the future,” according to President Biden.
“The competition with China is going to be stiff. That’s what I expect. And that’s what I welcome,” Biden told the Munich Security Conference. “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. We can own the race of the future.”
Biden’s virtual address to the annual forum was closely watched by U.S. and European diplomats who regarded former President Donald Trump’s administration as a driving force behind “the contemporary ‘spiritual disunity of the West,’” as conference organizers put it last year. Biden affirmed those sensibilities, but his caution about China put a brake on the most enthusiastic believers in partnerships between Beijing and democratic governments around the world.
“We have to push back against the Chinese government’s economic abuses and coercion that undercut the foundations of the international economic system, everyone,” Biden said. “We must shape the rules that will govern the advance of technology and the norms of behavior in cyberspace, artificial intelligence, [and] biotechnology so that they are used to lift people up — not used to pin them down.”
That reminder sounded a more aggressive note than the one favored by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a speech prior to Biden’s remarks. The former Portuguese prime minister warned world leaders that the U.S.-China competition could degenerate into a global divide that brings the risk of major military conflict.
“We cannot solve the biggest problems when the biggest powers are at odds,” Guterres said. “Our world cannot afford a future where the two largest economies split the globe into two opposing areas, in a great fracture. … A technological and economic divide risks turning into a geostrategic and military divide, and we must avoid these at all costs.”
That comment evoked the message from Chinese officials who accused Trump’s administration of attempting to build “a new Iron Curtain,” but U.S. security officials believe that Beijing has been “waging … a cold war” for years, an assessment that has taken root among Republicans and Democrats alike.
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Biden framed that competition as a necessary defensive measure.
“We have to protect for space, for innovation, for intellectual property, and the creative genius that thrives through the free exchange of ideas in open, democratic societies,” he said. “We must stand up for the democratic values that make it possible for us to accomplish any of this, pushing back against those who would monopolize and normalize repression.”
