‘We’re a Pacific power’: Joe Biden faces pressure to hold hard line of defence against China
- The incoming president faces multiple challenges from China in regards to Taiwan, the South China Sea and India
- The world’s biggest navy belongs to China, a new milestone that the Pentagon disclosed in September
As a Biden administration takes the reins in Washington, the stakes have never been higher for the US relationship with China and the rest of Asia. In the third part of a post-US-election series, Washington correspondent Jacob Fromer explores how the president-elect will deal with a rising and more assertive Beijing on the defence front.
“[China] is a very relentless and ruthless competitor,” said Paul Heer, who spent decades as an intelligence analyst for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and served as the US government’s national intelligence officer for East Asia. “And we have to be very cautious and very much aware of that.”
“We’re a Pacific power,” Biden wrote in an essay last month. With US-China tensions soaring, and both countries seeing each other increasingly as adversaries, Beijing may put that to the test.