Biden: I Don’t Want to Contain China

By Staff, Agencies

US President Joe Biden has said that he does not want to “contain China,” and revealed that he had a meeting with Beijing’s second-highest official at the G20 summit.

“I don’t want to contain China,” Biden told reporters at a news conference in Hanoi, Vietnam. “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.”

The US president revealed that he had spoken with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi, India, which wrapped up on Sunday. He said they talked about “stability,” adding that the conversation “wasn’t confrontational at all.”

Beijing has so far not commented on the matter. Li urged G20 members on Saturday to work together in the spirit of “unity instead of division, cooperation instead of confrontation, and inclusion instead of exclusion.”

Relations between the US and China have deteriorated significantly in recent years, with diplomats on both sides trading belligerent rhetoric and accusations of escalation.