My Take | China won’t be the 10-foot-tall bogeyman any time soon
- US President Joe Biden wants to stop China from being the world’s ‘leading, wealthiest, most powerful’ country. He needn’t bother
Western politicians often get into rhetorical flights of fancy. A lifelong pol, we shouldn’t be surprised US President Joe Biden has declared he will single-handedly stop China from becoming the world’s “leading” country.
“China has an overall goal,” he said, “and I don’t criticise them for the goal, but they have an overall goal to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world and the most powerful country in the world.
“That’s not going to happen on my watch, because the United States is going to continue to grow and expand.”
Leading, wealthiest, most powerful? It strikes me that Beijing has much more moderate goals. Chinese communist leaders would be perfectly happy if their country is treated as equal, rather than superior, to the United States.
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Biden says China won't become ‘the most powerful country’ on his watch
It doesn’t hurt, though, for Biden to play up the China threat. The reality is rather different. China has a long way to go before matching the US. By that time, should it ever happen, neither President Xi Jinping nor Biden would be around.