(Washington) Joe Biden said Tuesday that the United States would not be intimidated by China, while saying not to seek conflict with Beijing, after the episode of the Chinese balloon which flew over American territory before being beaten down.
“Make no mistake about it: as we clearly showed last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country and we have done it”, launched the American president in his speech on “the ‘State of the Union’ before the combined Houses of Congress.
The American army shot down on Saturday, off the coast of South Carolina, this Chinese balloon considered by the Pentagon as a spy balloon, intended to collect sensitive information.
Beijing argued for its part that it was a civilian aerostat, mainly intended to collect meteorological data.
Mr. Biden has been harshly criticized by the Republican opposition, who accuse him of having waited, a sign according to him of the “weakness” of his administration vis-à-vis Beijing.
In his speech, the president was tough and stressed that the United States was “in the strongest position in decades to compete with China or anyone else in the world.”
“Winning the competition with China should unite us all,” he said, however, saying he was determined “to work with China where it can serve American interests and benefit the whole world”.
“I made it clear to the [dirigeant chinois] Xi Jinping that we seek competition, not conflict,” he said.
He repeatedly referred to the battle over semiconductor manufacturing, where the United States lost its dominant position to China.
Joe Biden did not dwell on foreign policy issues in this speech of just over an hour, referring to US support for Ukraine “for as long as it takes” but without mentioning, for example, Iran or North Korea, or even the devastating earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria on Monday.
Beijing refuses an appeal from the Pentagon
On Monday, the Chinese government had estimated that the United States, by shooting down the balloon, had “seriously affected and damaged” relations between the two countries.
The incident has in fact forced the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, to postpone Friday in extremis a highly anticipated trip to the Chinese capital at the start of the week, intended precisely to appease relations between the two great strategic rivals.
A sign of the tensions, the Pentagon revealed on Tuesday that Beijing had refused on Saturday the American proposal for a telephone call between the head of the Pentagon Lloyd Austin and his counterpart Wei Fenghe.
“On Saturday, February 4, just after taking action to shoot down the Chinese Communist Party balloon, the Ministry [américain] of Defense has submitted a request for a secure call between Minister Austin and Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe,” Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder said on Tuesday.
“Communications between our armies are especially important at times like these. Alas, the Chinese Communist Party declined our request,” he added.
The US military announced on Monday that it had begun to recover the first debris from the Chinese balloon, including part of the canvas.
According to the Pentagon, the balloon itself was about 60 meters high and carried a kind of basket weighing more than a ton which remains to be recovered.
American officials assured that the decision to wait before shooting it down had provided “a tremendous opportunity to better understand and study” the craft, whose crossing of American territory captivated the country for several days.