Joe Biden mentioned China was changing into too weak to invade Taiwan, blaming the slowing economic system on serving to to cut back the specter of a full-scale assault.
Despite Beijing’s bellicose rhetoric and manoeuvres within the South China Sea, Mr Biden mentioned the slowdown would have an effect on Beijing’s skill to seize management of Taiwan over which it has claimed sovereignty for many years.
“I don’t think this is going to cause China to invade Taiwan,” Mr Biden mentioned in Hanoi on the second cease of his journey to Asia.
“As a matter of fact, the opposite. It probably doesn’t have the same capacity that it had before.”
However, in a transfer to curb China’s affect within the area, the US and Vietnam agreed a “strategic pact”, strengthening hyperlinks between the 2 international locations.
Mr Biden, who signed the settlement with Vietnam’s chief Nguyen Phu Trong, mentioned the deal signalled that the US was a Pacific nation and “not going anywhere”.
He added: “This is a new, elevated status that will be a force for prosperity and security in one of the most consequential regions in the world.”
A key ingredient of the settlement will see Vietnam boosted as a manufacturing hub for semiconductors – thus weakening Beijing’s domination of the sector.
Vietnam, which already has strategic partnerships with Russia and China, mentioned the settlement is seen as a part of its “bamboo diplomacy” of rigorously balancing its hyperlinks with all main powers.
Relations between Washington and Beijing have been tense in recent times with the US administration cancelling Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s go to to China in February amid a row over the looks of surveillance balloons over the US.
There have additionally been tensions over commerce particularly in know-how.
The strategy, nevertheless, has softened in current months with senior administration figures together with Mr Blinken and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo visiting China.
But Mr Biden sought to clarify the shifting technique when he spoke to reporters on Sunday.
“Really what this trip is about, it’s less about containing China. I don’t want to contain China. I just want to make sure that we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away, everybody knows what it’s all about,” he mentioned.
“We’re not looking to hurt China. Sincerely, we’re all better off if China does well by the international rules.”
Republicans have attacked Biden’s China coverage
Mr Biden added that he anticipated to meet Chinese president Xi Jinping “sooner rather than later.” The Chinese chief didn’t attend the G20 summit in New Delhi.
Mr Biden performed down the risk posed by China, arguing that the nation confronted important economic challenges.
Earlier this 12 months he referred to the Chinese economic system as a “ticking time bomb”.
The Biden administration has come beneath assault from Republicans over its China coverage, which has seen a number of senior members of the administration journey to Beijing in current months.
In June they condemned his choice to ship Mr Blinken to China, accusing the administration of undermining US nationwide safety.
‘Don’t appease China’
And Republican presidential candidate, Nikki Haley, stepped up the assault on Sunday by describing his strategy to Beijing, which she accused of killing Americans with Fentanyl.
“For Biden to realise, you don’t send Cabinet members over to China to appease them,” she mentioned on CNN’s State of The Union.
“You begin getting severe with China and say we’re not going to put up with it. They maintain sending totally different Cabinet officers over…and it’s embarrassing.
“They are placing a Chinese spy base up in…Cuba, off the coast of Florida and don’t await the truth that they’re going to be sending Chinese navy troopers there. What are we doing appeasing China as an alternative?”
In Washington, there have been bipartisan calls for brand new legal guidelines to forestall China from shopping for farmland close to navy installations.
And Ms Haley, who was the US ambassador to the United Nations within the Trump administration, demanded the nation take again land which it had already purchased.
