China is ‘going to eat our lunch’ on infrastructure, Biden says
WASHINGTON — President Biden on Thursday warned that the US would need to “step up” and fix its ailing infrastructure or be left behind by an economically surging China, which will “eat our lunch.”
“Last night, I was on the phone for two straight hours with Xi Jinping,” Biden said to reporters in the Oval Office after his first call with the Chinese Communist Party chairman.
Describing the call as “a good conversation,” the president raised concerns about the growing rivalry between Washington and Beijing for global dominance and said the US was falling behind.
“If we don’t get moving, they’re going to eat our lunch,” Biden said. “They have major, major new initiatives on rail and they already have rail that goes 225 mph with ease.”
The shifting US-China relationship poses one of the greatest foreign policy challenges to Biden’s presidency and comes as China seeks to grow its influence overseas with its enormous “Belt and Road Initiative” which provides infrastructure loans to poor nations.
The Trump administration took a hardline approach to Beijing, slapping Chinese-made goods with steep tariffs and vowing to return to a period of American prosperity.
Biden spoke about China’s growing economic power during a meeting with Democratic senators on investing in America’s infrastructure and said he had directed them to begin examining how the US could fight back.
The president said the US would need to mirror Beijing’s efforts in new technologies like electric cars.
“They’re working very hard to do what I think we’re going to have to do,” he said.
“They’re investing billions of dollars dealing with a whole range of issues that relate to transportation, the environment and a whole range of other things, so we just have to step up,” he said.
During his first speech at the Pentagon on Wednesday, the president also revealed that a new Department of Defense task force will examine the US-China military posture and its “growing challenges.”
