CHENGDU—US Vice President Joe Biden said China’s human-rights record impedes its economic growth and that US advocacy for greater freedoms isn’t meant to undermine stability in Asia’s largest economy.“Maybe the biggest difference” between the two countries is their approach to human rights, Biden said at the Sichuan University in Chengdu, on his last day in China. “I recognize that many of you in this auditorium see our advocacy of human rights as at best an intrusion and at worst an assault on your sovereignty.”
Biden’s remarks follow his three days in Beijing, where he told Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Friday that China has nothing to fear when it comes to its investment in US Treasuries. China’s Treasury holdings of $1.17 trillion, while down from their high of $1.18 trillion in October, have increased for the past three months, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The US and China have followed different paths, Biden said on Sunday. While China has embraced parts of a free-market system it has done so “while resisting political openness and maintaining the state’s deep involvement in economic affairs.”
Biden’s visit was scheduled before the first-ever downgrade of US debt by Standard & Poor’s on August 5 and that issue has overshadowed public discussions between the vice president and Chinese leaders. A day after S&P cut US debt to AA+ from AAA, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said the US government must realize it can no longer “borrow its way out of messes of its own making.” China is the biggest single foreign owner of US debt.
“The Chinese people should take solace,” Biden said on Sunday in the southwestern Chinese city. “You’re safe.”
Biden also struck a harder tone on trade, saying “we’re in trouble” when US investors can’t have fully owned subsidiaries of their company operate in many sectors in China and are “entirely excluded from competing in other sectors.” Those are “restrictions that no other major economy imposes on us or anyone else so broadly.”
On Friday Biden held a discussion in Beijing with about 20 US and Chinese business leaders. China’s undervalued exchange rate, opening up the Chinese market to US exports, and protecting intellectual property rights are top concerns for US companies.
Administration officials insist that the main point of the vice president’s visit is to get to know his counterpart, China’s Vice President Xi Jinping, the man most likely to replace Chinese President Hu Jintao in 2013.
The two leaders will spend much of the day together. Xi came to Chengdu from Beijing and will travel with Biden to Dujiangyan, a city in Sichuan Province that was badly hit by an earthquake in May 2008.
In Beijing Biden told Wen: “We appreciate and welcome your concluding that the United States is such a safe haven because we appreciate your investment in US Treasuries.” Biden said he wanted to make clear “that you have nothing to worry about in terms of their viability.”
On Monday Biden will travel to Ulan Bator, Mongolia, where he will celebrate the country’s democracy and attend cultural shows.
(Bloomberg News)
In Photo: US Vice President Joe Biden (right) talks to Sichuan Gov. Jiang Jufeng before a meeting at a hotel in Chengdu in southwestern China’s Sichuan province on Sunday. (AP)
