U.S. President Joe Biden this week welcomed the prime minister of Japan and the president of the Philippines to the White House to discuss security in the Indo-Pacific region. VOA Senior Washington Correspondent Carolyn Presutti compares Biden’s security policies with those of his 2024 presidential opponent Donald Trump. Voice of America
Japan’s prime minister Fumio Kishida on Thursday called on Americans to overcome their “self-doubt” as he offered a paean to US global leadership before a bitterly divided Congress. Warning of risks from the rise of China, Kishida said that Japan – stripped of its right to a military after the second world war – was determined to do more to share responsibility with its ally the United States. “As we meet here today, I detect an undercurrent of self-doubt among some Americans about what your role in the world should…
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping have clashed in a telephone call about Taiwan and US trade restrictions on technology, but sought to manage their tensions, as two top US officials prepare to visit Beijing. The nearly two-hour telephone conversation on Tuesday was the two leaders’ first direct interaction since a summit in November in California that saw a marked thaw in tone, if not the long-term rivalry, between the world’s two largest economies. The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, will leave Wednesday and visit both Guangzhou, the southern city emblematic of…
Imagine a world where America’s foreign adversaries don’t need spies or hackers to infiltrate our society or meddle with our democracy. Instead, they can deploy a far more insidious tool: a digital platform, addictive by design, that captivates its users and then mobilizes them to influence our democratic institutions. The scenario may sound farfetched, but something like that recently happened. Earlier this month, while the US Congress was considering a bill that would curtail TikTok’s operations in the United States, the popular, Chinese-owned social media platform confronted its users with…
The House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would require TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the United States. The legislation now moves to the Senate, where its likelihood of passing is uncertain. But with a landslide of support in the House – 352 Congress members voted in favor of the bill and only 65 voted against – it’s clear that TikTok is facing its biggest existential threat yet in the US. Here’s what you need to know about the…
BEIJING — U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday criticized China’s “unfair economic practices” and insisted he has done a better job standing up to Beijing than did former President Donald Trump, his rival in this year’s presidential election. In his State of the Union address, Biden also touted other aspects of his China policy, including “standing up for peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits” and revitalizing “our partnerships and alliances in the Pacific.” “I’ve made sure that the most advanced American technologies can’t be used in China … frankly…
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Donald Trump “repeatedly and willfully” violated the US constitution by “allowing his businesses to accept millions of dollars from some of the most corrupt nations on Earth”, prominently including China, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee charged on Thursday, unveiling a 156-page report on the matter. Four businesses owned by Trump’s family conglomerate received at least $7.8m in payments in total from 20 countries during his four years in the White House, the report said. It added that the payments probably represented just a fraction of foreign payments…
Utah’s Republican senator Mitt Romney has released a statement ahead of Joe Biden’s meeting with Xi Jinping today, urging the Biden administration to be “clear-eyed in its understanding of China’s nefarious economic intentions.” In his statement, Romney said: “Our government cannot continue to chase China with offers of concessions without concrete action from the Chinese Communist party, especially in instances where they have no interest in making meaningful changes to their own behavior in the first place.” <gu-island name="TweetBlockComponent" priority="feature" deferuntil="visible" props="{"element":{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TweetBlockElement","html":" My statement ahead of President Biden's meeting with…
Xi Jinping began his first visit to the United States in six years on Tuesday just after US secretary of state Antony Blinken took a thinly veiled swipe at Beijing by stressing the need for freedoms and rule of law. The Chinese president is on his first visit to the US since 2017. He is due to meet Joe Biden at an undisclosed location in San Francisco on Wednesday morning and then attend the annual summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum. Xi’s summit with the US president…