Biden pledges to prevent China from becoming the world’s ‘leading’ country
- ‘I see stiff competition with China,’ Biden says
- Biden reiterates plan to convene a democracy summit
Casting America’s competition with Beijing as the most important front in a generational struggle between democracy and autocracy, Biden reiterated a plan to convene a democracy summit and more than double the amount of investment in science and technology as a percentage of GDP.
“I see stiff competition with China,” Biden said in his first press conference as president. “China has an overall goal, 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 United States is going to continue to grow and expand.”
Biden lamented that US investment in “pure research and investment in science” had dropped to 0.7 per cent of the country’s GDP, down from “a little over 2 per cent” in the 1960s.
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Biden says China won't become ‘the most powerful country’ on his watch
“The future lies in who can, in fact, own the future as it relates to technology, quantum computing, a whole range of things, including the medical field,” he said, pledging to ensure that investment in areas including medical research, artificial intelligence and quantum computing adds up to “closer to 2 per cent”.