CNN
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President Joe Biden mentioned in a brand new interview that the recently recovered Chinese spy balloon that traversed the continental US didn’t harm bilateral relations between the 2 international locations.
“The idea shooting down a balloon that’s gathering information over America and that makes relations worse?” Biden informed PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff in a wide-ranging interview a day after his second State of the Union address.
“I made it real clear to Xi Jinping that we’re going to compete fully with China, but we’re not looking for conflict. That’s been the case so far.”
Biden’s response marks the second time this week that he’s sought to downplay the impact of what US officers deemed a “brazen” act by Beijing to ship an intelligence gathering balloon throughout a number of US states – with indicators it loitered over key army installations.
Biden, who ordered the US military to shoot down the balloon over open water final week, mentioned he has not spoken to the Chinese language chief for the reason that balloon was noticed. However he pointed to continued contacts between officers in his administration and their Chinese language counterparts.
US officers registered their objections to Chinese language officers whereas the balloon was in flight. In addition they communicated with Chinese language officers after the balloon was shot down, based on senior administration officers.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a high-stakes trip to Beijing as a result of balloon incursion, undercutting a key aspect of Biden’s first face-to-face assembly with Xi in November. That assembly was designed to chill tensions that had been rising between the 2 powers all through Biden’s opening weeks in workplace, with Blinken’s follow-up go to to China thought of the following marker within the effort.
Biden administration officers have pressured that the assembly was not canceled, however as an alternative delayed till a later date. That date has not but been set.
Requested by CNN this week if US officers had any indication as to why China would commit such an overt act, Biden laughed off the query. “They’re the Chinese government,” he mentioned.
Biden administration officers have maintained they have been in a position to transfer rapidly to mitigate any intelligence assortment capability of the balloon and have countered that they may find yourself benefiting from the ability to collect information about the balloon and Chinese language intelligence capabilities, each throughout its flight and within the restoration of its wreckage from the Atlantic Ocean.
That hasn’t quieted the political storm the occasion created.
Home Majority Chief Steve Scalise’s workplace mentioned the chamber will vote Thursday on a decision “condemning the Chinese Communist Party’s use of a high-altitude surveillance balloon over United States territory as a brazen violation of United States sovereignty.”
Republicans have criticized Biden for ready a number of days earlier than taking pictures the balloon down, and Sen. Marco Rubio mentioned on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that the president ready to inform Individuals in regards to the balloon was a “dereliction of duty.”
Biden informed Woodruff that “the idea that it was a dereliction of duty is a bizarre notion.”
“China knows exactly what the deal is with us,” he continued.
However the president did seem to query China’s power – particularly in what has been a fragile financial second for the nation.
“He has an economy that’s not functioning very well,” Biden mentioned.
And he detailed a telling commentary he shared with Xi final yr as US officers warned China to not present army help to Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.
“Everybody assumed that China would be all in with Russia in Ukraine. They’re not all in,” Biden mentioned. “As a matter of fact I called him this summer to say, this is not a threat, just an observation: Look what’s happened to Russia. Six hundred American corporations have pulled out of Russia, from McDonald’s to Exxon. And I said, ‘You’ve told me all along that the reason why you need a relationship with the United States and Europe is so they invest in China.’ I said, ‘Who is gonna invest in China if you engage in the same kind of deal? You’ll notice there’s not been much going on there.’”
This story has been up to date with extra particulars.
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