Biden faces balancing act in dealing with China
Balancing conflict and cooperation is tough enough, and it does look like Biden's administration will not easily find allies for a united international front as well.
AS CHAIRMAN of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later, as an influential vice-president in the administration of President Barack Obama, Joe Biden, one of Washington's leading foreign policy voices, tended to echo the bipartisan consensus that dominated US policy toward China since the opening to the communist regime following President Richard Nixon's historic 1972 visit to Beijing.
Like other members of Washington's foreign policy establishment then, the Democratic Senator Biden from Delaware had welcomed China's emergence as a great power, "because great powers adhere to international norms in the areas of non-proliferation, human rights and trade", as he put it after a visit to China in 2001.
He supported all the major US policy decisions that promoted the idea of engagement with China, including the move to allow the Chinese to join the World Trade Organization (WTO).
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