Research
Special Projects
Biden Administration International Affairs Personnel Tracker
Joseph Biden
President of the United States of America
The heat of the election forced Joe Biden to project that he could be just as tough on China as Donald Trump. However, there were stark differences between Biden and Trump on how to handle the numerous economic, societal, and security issues pervading the U.S.-China relationship. Biden’s lengthy political career provides a lens as to how he has evolved on China and where his priorities have shifted. As a Senator from 1972-2008 and member (and later Chair) of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Biden was instrumental in shaping the initial trajectory of the U.S.-China relationship since its normalization in 1979, particularly on trade.
Although Biden frequently co-sponsored or voted on legislation condemning Chinese human rights violations and security concerns, he, like many other Democrats and Republicans at the time, was quick to shift priorities in order to develop and maintain the rapidly growing economic relationship with China. While Vice President, Biden took the helm of the second Obama Administration’s China portfolio, he worked tirelessly to prop up the United States’ regional economic liberalization goals with strategic partners through the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as well as supported a forward military presence in the Western Pacific to manage China’s increasingly assertive economic and foreign and security policy behavior.
Views On China
While the process of economic decoupling with China continued during 2021, with retaliatory trade measures of increased scope and stability, the Biden Administration has been consistently amenable to cooperation with China on matters like climate change. This cooperation reached a nadir with a U.S.-China Joint Declaration on climate change coming from the sidelines of the COP26 conference in November. However, Biden and Xi only had one virtual meeting in 2021 where no headway was made on wedge issues like Taiwan, human rights, and Indo-Pacific maritime rights.
Biden has clearly abandoned the Trump administration’s strategy to compete with China only through unilateral or bilateral actions, returning the U.S. to its former prominence on a multilateral basis. To jumpstart this initiative, he held the Summit for Democracy in December as a means of working together with other democratic governments to provide an alternative to China. The administration also expanded the scope of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), with two summits that promoted “a vision of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific,” and launched the AUKUS security pact to coordinate military capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region. Biden is also pushing for a broad Indo-Pacific Economic Framework that would see the U.S. role in Asia driven by consensus on digital trade, supply chain security, sustainability, and workers’ rights.
For a comprehensive analysis on Joe Biden’s background and the evolution of his positions on China, see Decoding President-Elect Joe Biden’s China Strategy.
Most Recent Actions
- On December 6, 2021, the Biden Administration announced that the U.S. will diplomatically boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, citing “the PRC’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.”
- On November 9, 2021, President Biden extended Trump’s E.O. 13959, continuing the national emergency which grants U.S. regulators enhanced tools to restrict Chinese securities investments that are connected to China’s military-industrial complex.
- On November 6, 2021, President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which, among other things, increases U.S. federal infrastructure spending in areas such as broadband and mass transit deemed vital for competing with China.
- On July 6, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order to promote competition in the U.S. economy which took aim at Silicon Valley. Biden announced that the order is intended to “show that American democracy and the American people can truly out-compete anyone.”
- On June 9, 2021 President Biden issued an Executive Order revoking former President Trump’s E.O.13873 of May 15, 2019 (Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain) that targeted Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat apps and signed a new order requiring security reviews. The new order does not name any companies but directs the Commerce Department to “evaluate these threats through rigorous, evidence-based analysis and…address any unacceptable or undue risks consistent with overall national security, foreign policy, and economic objectives”.
- On June 3, 2021, Biden signed E.O. 14032: Addressing the Threat from Securities Investments that Finance Certain Companies of the People’s Republic of China. This E.O. further clarifies Trump’s E.O. 13959 signed on November 12, 2020 and updated the number of Chinese companies barred from U.S. investment.
- On May 15, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity to counter the “persistent and increasingly sophisticated malicious cyber campaigns that threaten the public sector, the private sector, and ultimately the American people’s security and privacy.”
- During the Leaders Climate Summit hosted by the United States on Earth Day, President Biden unveiled the U.S. International Climate Finance Plan. The Plan covers five areas:
- scaling up climate finance and enhancing its impact;
- Mobilizing private sector finance;
- taking steps to end international official financing for carbon-intensive fossil fuel-based energy;
- making capital flows consistent with low-emissions, climate-resilient pathways; and
- defining, measuring, and reporting U.S. public climate finance.
- On March 3, 2021, President Biden issued an Interim National Security Strategic Guidance “to convey [his] vision for how America will engage with the world.” President Biden directed departments and agencies to align their actions with the guidance. Identifying China as “the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system,” the guidance lists several measures to “out-compete China” as well as areas for potential cooperation.
- On February 24, 2021, President Biden issued an Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains, aiming to “strengthen the resilience of America’s supply chains.”
- On February 11, 2021, President Biden issued an Executive Order on Blocking Property with Respect to the Situation in Burma, ordering for sanctions on those responsible for the military coup in Myanmar.
- On January 25, 2021, President Biden issued an Executive Order on Ensuring the Future Is Made in All of America by All of America’s Workers, ordering the United States Government to, when possible and consistent with applicable law, procure goods and services “from sources that will help American businesses compete in strategic industries and help America’s workers thrive.”
- On January 21, 2021, President Biden issued an Executive Order on a Sustainable Public Health Supply Chain, directing immediate actions to secure supplies necessary for combating the COVID-19 pandemic.
- On July 28, 2021, President Biden delivered a speech on the importance of American manufacturing where he said:
I’m placing my bet on America. I know you all are going to make sure it pays off because it will pay off with good jobs, long-term employment, the ability for America to, once again, reassert its role as the most powerful economy in the world. And that is as important as the size of our military and as anything else we do. And if we think we’re not in a race, well, guess what? Take a look at China…I spent an awful lot of time with Xi Jinping, President of China — more than, I’m told, than any other world leader has. And he’s made it really clear he doesn’t think democracies can compete in the 21st century…America’s real power is not in the exercise of a military power, but people follow us because of our example.
- On June 28, 2021, Biden released the Statement on House Passage of the National Science Foundation for the Future Act and the Department of Energy Science for the Future Act that refers to China as a innovation competitor in danger of outpacing the United States.
But decades of neglect and disinvestment have left us at a competitive disadvantage as countries across the globe, like China, have poured money and focus into new technologies and industries, leaving us at real risk of being left behind….By rebuilding those domestic sources of strength, we can out-compete China and the rest of the world for years to come.
- On June 24, 2021, in response to the closure of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper, President Biden released a statement about the degradation of press freedom in the city.
- On June 24, 2021, Biden provided remarks on the bipartisan infrastructure deal which included a statement on the state of competition with China.
…let me be clear: We’re in a race with China and the rest of the world for the 21st century. They’re not waiting. They’re investing tens of billions of dollars across the board. Tens of billions.
- Also on June 16, 2021, during remarks given by Biden in Geneva, Switzerland, Biden described his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping:
Let’s get something straight. We know each other well; we’re not old friends. It’s just pure business.
- On June 16, 2021, President Biden and President Vladimir Putin of Russia released the U.S.-Russia Presidential Joint Statement on Strategic Stability that reiterates the “shared goals” of the U.S. and Russia in the strategic sphere.
- On June 13, 2021, Biden reiterated the United States’ outlook on the competition with China and how the United States plans on handling the bilateral relationship during a press conference:
And so, I think you’re going to see just straightforward dealing with China. And again, we’re not looking — as I’ve told Xi Jinping myself, I’m not looking for conflict. Where we can cooperate, we’ll cooperate. Where we disagree, I’m going to state it frankly, and we are going to respond to actions that are inconsistent.”
- On May 27, 2021, Biden gave remarks during a speech in Ohio about job creation and how electric vehicles are being made in China rather than in the U.S.:
We want to lead the world in exports of these new technologies instead of ceding the global market and job creation to the Chinese. They’re building 20 times as many electric vehicles as we’re doing now, and the technology that goes with that. What are we doing? It’s millions of jobs in China instead of here.
- On May 26, 2021, in the wake of renewed questions about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, President Biden released a statement announcing that he has asked the U.S. Intelligence Community to create a report within the next 90 days that will bring a more “definitive conclusion” on the origin, which will include “specific questions for China.” The statement concludes:
The United States will also keep working with like-minded partners around the world to press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence.
- On May 18, 2021, during a visit to an electric vehicle plant in Michigan, President Biden reportedly “cast the United States as being in an urgent race with China to build electric vehicles.”
- On May 12, 2021, in remarks responding to the Colonial Pipeline Incident, President Biden linked the need for America to update its infrastructure with the competition with China:
we’re in a competition with China and the rest of the world to win the 21st century, economically. And we’re not going to win it competing with an infrastructure that is out of the 20th century.
- On May 6, 2021, President Biden gave remarks on the American Jobs Plan during a visit to Louisiana. As part of his remarks, he stated:
The Chinese are eating our lunch. They’re eating our lunch, economically. They’re investing hundreds of billions of dollars in research and development. That’s why, right now, if it keeps their way, they’re going to own the electric car market in the world. They’re going to own a whole range — we got to compete. We got to compete.
President Biden expanded on these remarks four days later during remarks on the economy at the White House, calling the American Jobs Plan an investment “to put us in a position to win the competition with China and the rest of the world for the 21st century.
- On April 28, 2021, President Biden delivered his first official remarks to a Joint Session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol. Among his comments were the following statements on China:
“We’re in competition with China and other countries to win the 21st Century…. China and other countries are closing in fast. We have to develop and dominate the products and technologies of the future: advanced batteries, biotechnology, computer chips, clean energy.”
President Biden also made comments on President Xi himself and his view of the world:
“I spent a lot of time with President Xi — traveled over 17,000 miles with him; spent, they tell me, over 24 hours in private discussions with him. When he called to congratulate me, we had a two-hour discussion. He’s deadly earnest about becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world. He and others — autocrats — think that democracy can’t compete in the 21st century with autocracies because it takes too long to get consensus.”
“That means making sure every nation plays by the same rules in the global economy, including China. In my discussions…with President Xi, I told him, “We welcome the competition. We’re not looking for conflict.” But I made absolutely clear that we will defend America’s interests across the board. America will stand up to unfair trade practices that undercut American workers and American industries, like subsidies from state — to state-owned operations and enterprises and the theft of American technology and intellectual property.”
“I also told President Xi that we’ll maintain a strong military presence in the Indo-Pacific, just as we do with NATO in Europe — not to start a conflict, but to prevent one.”
On May 4, 2021, the State Department Twitter released a clipped video of this speech with an accompanying tweet:
@POTUS on U.S.-China relations: America will stand up to unfair trade practices that undercut American workers and American industries. America will not back away from our commitment to human rights and we’ll maintain a strong military presence in the Indo-Pacific
- From December 9-10, 2021, President Biden convened the first Summit for Democracy, where several governments (including Taipei) were invited to discussions on the themes of “(1) strengthening democracy and defending against authoritarianism; (2) fighting corruption; and (3) promoting respect for human rights.”
- On November 16, 2021, President Biden held a virtual meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping where he raised several contentious matters, such as human rights and maritime rights, but underscored the U.S. commitment to the One China policy as a starting point for dialogue on the Taiwan issue.
- On October 31, 2021, President Biden delivered remarks alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen where he hailed the agreement of the inaugural U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council to end their mutual aluminum tariffs as “a new era of transatlantic cooperation” that will “lift up U.S. aluminum and steel…incentivize emission reductions…restrict access to our markets for dirty steel from countries like China, and counter countries that dump steel in our markets.”
- On October 26 and 27, 2021, President Biden participated virtually in the U.S.-ASEAN Summit and the East Asia Summit with leaders of ASEAN and neighboring states where he reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific.’
- On September 24, 2021, President Biden hosted the first in-person summit of the Quad where the gathered leaders agreed to cooperate on “ending the COVID-19 pandemic…promoting high-standards infrastructure, combatting the climate crisis, [and] partnering on emerging technologies.”
- On September 21, 2021, President Biden spoke before the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly where – while not mentioning China by name – he took a stand against “the authoritarianism of the world” and made the case for democracy as an alternative, calling it “the best tool we have to unleash our full human potential.”
- On September 15, 2021, President Biden announced the creation of an Australia-UK-U.S. security partnership – AUKUS – which will include cooperation between the three states on “cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and additional undersea capabilities” in the Indo-Pacific region.
- On May 21, 2021, President Biden and H.E. Moon Jae-In, President of the Republic of Korea, held a joint press conference following President Moon’s visit to the White House. In Biden’s remarks, he commented on their nation’s joint interests on “issues critical to regional stability, such as maintaining freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and preserving peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits.”
- In response to a question on whether President Biden had “pushed” President Moon to take a tougher stance against China on Taiwan, President Moon replied (as interpreted) that:
Well, fortunately, there wasn’t such pressure. But, as for peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, we agreed how important that region is, especially considering the special characteristics between China and Taiwan. We decided to work more closely on this matter going forward.
- The two leaders released a joint statement that same day that reiterated the above joint interests of respecting international law “in the South China Sea and beyond” and “preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”
- On April 22-23, 2021, President Biden held a Virtual Leaders Summit on Climate, where he delivered opening remarks.
- Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered remarks at the Summit, declaring for the first time that “China will strictly control coal-fired power generation projects, and strictly limit the increase in coal consumption over the 14th Five-Year Plan period and phase it down in the 15th Five-Year Plan period.“
- On April 21, 2021, President Biden held a phone call with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau which included comments on the two Canadians who were “unjustly detained by the government of China.”
- On April 16, 2021, President Biden hosted Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga at the White House, the first foreign-leader visit of Biden’s presidency and the two released a U.S.- Japan Joint Leaders statement. The White House also released a fact sheet on U.S.-Japan Competitiveness and Resilience (CoRe) Partnership which discusses U.S.-Japan partnerships for competition and innovation, global health and climate change.
- On March 12, 2021, the Quad conducted the first-ever leader-level summit and released a Quad Leaders’ Joint Statement. The Quad leaders pledged to strengthen their cooperation on a number of “defining challenges of our time,” including “challenges to the rules-based maritime order in the East and South China Seas.”
Archive
See February 2021 for the categories to include and examples of how to display it.
-Most recent completed month at the top (newest to oldest)
-no quotation marks needed on block quotes
-There will only ever be a ‘Media’ or ‘In His/Her Own Words’ subsection in each month.
Media
- Secretary Blinken’s Call with PRC Director Yang Jiechi
On February 18, 2021, Secretary Blinken held a phone call with his counterparts among the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, commonly known as The Quad. In his discussions with Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne, Indian Minister of External Affairs Dr. S. Jaishankar, and Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, each representative reiterated commitments to:
the Quad meeting at least annually at the Ministerial level and on a regular basis at senior and working levels to strengthen cooperation on advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific region, including support for freedom of navigation and territorial integrity.
Secretary Antony J. Blinken With Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC Andrea Mitchell Reports
In His Own Words
- In response to Hong Kong authorities arresting and charging 47 prominent pro-democracy politicians and activists, Secretary Blinken tweeted on February 28, 2021:
We condemn the detention of and charges filed against pan-democratic candidates in Hong Kong’s elections and call for their immediate release. Political participation and freedom of expression should not be crimes. The U.S. stands with the people of Hong Kong.
See February 2021 for the categories to include and examples of how to display it.
-no quotation marks needed on block quotes
-There will only ever be a ‘Media’ or ‘In His/Her Own Words’ subsection in each month.
Media
- Important or notable initial media perceptions reacting to their announcement should go here (if it happened before January 20).
- As ‘America’s Doctor,’ Dr. Fauci’s nomination, which he quickly accepted, was well-received by the public-at-large and by his colleagues in the medical field.
- “Fauci accepts offer of chief medical adviser role in Biden administration,” The Guardian, December 4, 2020
- “Biden Asks Fauci To Serve As ‘Chief Medical Advisor’ During Covid Crisis,” Forbes, December 4, 2020
- “Biden asked Fauci to be his chief medical advisor, and Fauci said yes ‘on the spot’,” Business Insider, December 4, 2020
In His Own Words
- Any relevant publications or speeches that were made prior to the Biden administration. No need to look before 2017 unless there is something of notable importance.
Page Last Updated: January 11, 2022
*None of the personnel in this tracker are associated with the Institute for China-America Studies. All images used on this page are sourced from the official Biden-Harris transition website buildbackbetter.gov or the public domain.*