China has hit back at President Biden's Thursday remarks which called China's economic problems a "ticking time bomb"—wherein he also referenced "bad folks" among the country's Communist Party leaders.
The president took several digs, also assessing that the world’s second-largest economy after the US is "in trouble" for its slowing growth and that it has the "highest unemployment rate going."
"China is a ticking time bomb in many cases," Biden said. "They’ve got some problems."
"That’s not good because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things," he said at the fundraising event in Park City, Utah. At one point he mocked Xi's Belt and Road Initiative as in actuality "debt and noose" due to the huge loans developing countries are on the hook for as part of the Chinese investment program.
China’s official Xinhua News Agency has seized on Biden's sharp words, responding that Biden is deploying the "old trick" of picking a fight with Beijing to distract as the administration's domestic problems continue piling up.
Xinhua sought to emphasize that "China’s economy has withstood pressure and made a rare recovery overall, with improvements in major indicators China has sufficient options in its macro policy toolbox, and the government is still formulating a series of more targeted and powerful policies for economic development in the next half of the year" - as presented in Bloomberg.
The state publication then blasted the "selective blindness" of China’s development on display by the US administration, which aims at "undermining confidence" in China by spreading negative sentiment.
Not helping the optics for Biden was the presence of several major, glaring factual errors peppering the speech, as Bloomberg points out:
"China was growing at 8% a year to maintain growth, now close to 2% a year,” he told donors in Park City, Utah, misstating China’s rate of expansion. “It’s in a position where the number of people who are of retirement age is larger than the number of people of working age,” he added, a statement that was not only incorrect but also off by hundreds of millions of people.
China is unlikely to be baited given the presence of "several major inaccuracies" in the speech - Bloomberg further observed.
Speaking of Biden's problems at home, Biden's provocative new comments aimed at Beijing had come the day after Republicans on the House Oversight Committee revealed over $20 million in payments were allegedly sent to the Biden family and their associates while Joe Biden was vice president, by foreign actors from places like Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
"During Joe Biden’s vice presidency, Hunter Biden sold him as ‘the brand’ to reap millions from oligarchs in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. It appears no real services were provided other than access to the Biden network, including Joe Biden himself. And Hunter Biden seems to have delivered," said committee chairman James Comer (R-KY). "It’s clear Joe Biden knew about his son’s business dealings and allowed himself to be ‘the brand’ sold to enrich the Biden family while he was Vice President of the United States." It seems this growing scandal ahead of next year's presidential election is exactly what Xinhua has in mind when it comes to the reference of domestic problems piling up for Biden.
