US president Joe Biden said that China’s recent economic troubles may diminish any inclination by Beijing to invade Taiwan as he traveled to Vietnam following the G20 meet in India. Joe Biden said he had met with Chinese premier Li Qiang while at the summit. When asked why he hasn’t met with Chinese president Xi Jinping in 10 months, the US president said his Chinese counterpart “has his hands full right now.”
Xi Jinping opted not to attend the G-20 summit with no explanation given. Joe Biden said China “has a difficult economic problem right now for a whole range of reasons that relate to international growth and lack thereof, and the policies that China has followed.”
“I don’t think it’s going to cause China to invade Taiwan, matter of fact the opposite, probably doesn’t have the same capacity as it had before,” he added during a press conference in Hanoi.
The US president also addressed growing tensions between the world’s two largest economies over their technological ambitions.
“I’m not going to sell China material that would increase their capacity to make more nuclear weapons or engage in defense activities,” Joe Biden said.
But Joe Biden emphasized that he had no intention of trying to contain or isolate 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 said.
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping have not spoken since the G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia in November 2022. This followed a new round of strains between Washington and Beijing including Taiwan, military encounters in the South China Sea, US’ export bans on semiconductor technology, and an alleged Chinese spy balloon that crossed the US.
