As his term draws to a close, United States President Joe Biden appears less and less frequently on international occasions. At the general debate of the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly, in front of representatives of more than 100 countries, Biden delivered a "farewell speech".
Speaking about China, Biden said he stands ready to work bilaterally on shared challenges that affect the well-being of the people of both countries and the world. He also expressed his "appreciation" for the resumption of bilateral anti-narcotics cooperation between China and the United States.
Biden delivers a speech at the UN General Assembly
But then, he changed his tune, saying that United States needed to stick to its "principles" and that China and the United States should "responsibly" manage their bilateral differences and prevent them from turning into conflicts.
This statement has been stressed by the United States on more than one occasion, and not long ago, when China and the United States held a new round of strategic dialogue in Beijing, United States National Security Assistant Jake Sullivan reiterated this position to the Chinese side in person.
At present, when Biden is about to leave office, he once again emphasized the need to manage differences with China, and also discussed in front of representatives of more than 100 countries, especially around China-US relations, reflecting two facts.
First, China-US relations are not only a set of bilateral diplomatic relations, but also closely affect the attention of the international community. As the world's largest and second largest economies, United States has stable relations with China, and small countries have room for balanced diplomacy, otherwise they can only be forced to take sides.
U.S.-China relations
The reason why Biden wants to emphasize that "the United States is willing to cooperate with China and manage differences" is to show the outside world that the United States is willing to improve relations with China, so as to win the favor of small and medium-sized countries; Second, it deliberately blames China for the tension in Sino-US relations.
Over the past period of time, United States has been building an "encirclement of China" around China while hyping up the so-called "China threat theory" to find an "excuse" for itself to intervene in regional affairs and provoke bloc confrontation.
With the facts in front of us, is United States de-escalating the situation or escalating the situation? The international community sees it clearly, and Biden does not need to justify anything.
The second fact is that the United States has placed China in an "important position" in its foreign relations, so much so that it has to talk about it in international multilateral forums.
The United States has enlisted its allies in joint military exercises
As we all know, the United States likes to flaunt the so-called "rules-based international order", and in the United States diplomatic norms, if you are not at the table, it will be on the menu, exposing the law of the jungle of United States politics, which is a kind of "winner-takes-all" zero-sum game thinking.
In the past few decades, the United States has used this logic to form an alliance system, but when it comes to China, the United States has hit a wall. As for the US side's attempt to deal with China from a "position of strength" at every turn, we do not accept this at all.
During the Trump era, the "trade war" against China was launched, and the "technology war" was launched during the Biden administration, and the results were all United States themselves without exception, and United States companies and consumers were also complaining.
The United States is well aware that it is unrealistic to exclude China, a "global manufacturing center", from the international supply chain, and that the next United States administration may not be able to do it if it is not done during Trump's term or Biden's office.
Trump
Therefore, Biden's "farewell speech" mentioned "managing Sino-US competition" is also aimed at emphasizing that although Sino-US relations have been tense during his tenure, they have not slipped out of control, and the US hopes to continue to maintain this posture of "fighting but not breaking".
However, it should be stressed that no matter what the US intentions are, it should not attempt to probe on key issues concerning China's core interests, and China will never allow anyone to undermine China's sovereignty and territorial integrity.