Vice President Mike Pence said the U.S. offers other countries a better option for economic partnership than China’s “authoritarianism and aggression.”
Pence said during a speech on Saturday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Papua New Guinea that the U.S. has a vision for a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” USA Today reported.
“Know that the United States offers a better option,” Pence told the gathering of politicians and business leaders from 21 Pacific Rim countries and territories. “We don’t drown our partners in a sea of debt, we don’t coerce or compromise your independence. The United States deals openly and fairly. We do not offer a constricting belt or a one-way road.”
In his address, Pence said that U.S. investment was a better alternative to China’s trillion-dollar infrastructure project spanning Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, dubbed the Belt and Road Initiative.
Pence also accused Beijing of putting up barriers for companies to enter its market.
“The United States will not change course until China changes its ways,” Pence said, adding that the nation practices “forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft and industrial subsidies on an unprecedented scale.”
