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Xi, Biden stake claims in China-US rivalry by touting opposing political systems
- Xi trumpets ‘brand new form of human civilisation’, while Biden ponders ‘who’d change places with Xi Jinping’
- Rhetoric on both sides points to ‘obvious signs of a cold war’, analyst says
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In two pivotal speeches within a day, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden sought to seize higher ground in the China-US rivalry as tensions between the world’s two most powerful nations rise on various fronts, from ideology to geopolitics.
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In a rare, explicit display of celebration of the Chinese governance model against Western systems, Xi argued in a speech on Tuesday that China had debunked “the myth that modernisation means Westernisation” and hailed the Chinese model as one for developing countries to follow.
Addressing top Communist Party cadres and government officials at a study session to follow up on key decisions made at the 20th party congress in October, Xi said China’s path “showed a new modernisation model, different from the West”, which he called a “brand new form of human civilisation”.
“We have completed in decades the industrialisation process that had taken developed Western countries hundreds of years,” he said in the speech, a month before an annual legislative session unveils a new line-up of top government jobs for the next five years.
Hours later, Biden mentioned China five times in his State of the Union address, calling for solidarity among Democrats and Republicans.
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