Biden administration taking 'strategic approach' to China, 'not in a rush,' Psaki says

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White House press secretary Jen Psaki holds a press briefing

President Biden is taking a "strategic approach" to China, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday, adding that the administration is "not in a rush."

Psaki, during the White House press briefing Thursday, said the president is "clear-eyed" about U.S.-China policy, noting that it is "a strategic competition."

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"To be more competitive, we need to take steps at home," Psaki said, adding that the administration will "work with partners and allies " on that strategy. "We are going to get our partners and come back at China."

Psaki, though, said the administration is "not in a rush" and is "taking a strategic approach."

Psaki’s comments came after Biden, on Wednesday night, had his first phone call with China’s President Xi Jinping since taking office. Senior administration officials said Biden outlined the administration's "core concerns" with China’s "practices, aggressive activities and abuses," signaling a "clear and consistent subscription to American values," while discussing areas in which the administration believes it could be in the United States’ national interest to work with Beijing.

"President Biden affirmed his priorities of protecting the American people’s security, prosperity, health, and way of life, and preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific," the White House said after the call Wednesday night. "President Biden underscored his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices, crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan." 

The White House said Biden and Xi "also exchanged views on countering the COVID-19 pandemic, and the shared challenges of global health security, climate change, and preventing weapons proliferation." 

"President Biden committed to pursuing practical, results oriented engagements when it advances the interests of the American people and those of our allies," the White House said. 

One senior administration official said the U.S. is being "very careful in our initial interactions with China," and that the administration is "trying to be clear where our priorities are."

The president’s "prescription" for U.S.-China relations, according to administration officials, is to strengthen U.S. economic foundation at home and make investments.

"We can get everything else right in our China, Asia policy, but if we get that wrong, we are not going to prevail in this competition, and in general, we are not going to prevail in our foreign policy," an administration official said. "This is a core part of our China strategy, and we believe we are off to a very strong start on this."

Last week, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said a "priority" of the Biden administration is "dealing with China’s trade abuses" that harm American workers. Sullivan said the Biden administration’s national security strategy will allow the United States to "compete more effectively" with China and said the national security team is focused on "creating jobs and raising wages here in the United States."

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But officials on Wednesday also said the Biden administration will focus on rebuilding alliances and partnerships "not out of nostalgia" but for the purpose of holding China "accountable for its abuses."

"We are engaged deeply at the presidential level and at every level below that with European partners on issues of trade and security, and there is a lot more work to do on this front," the official said.

Senior administration officials also said Wednesday that an "immediate" focus is on technology — an area they say they have already started working with Republicans on — a move they say is "required in key industries of the future," referring to supply chain issues, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, biotech, clean energy and more.

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As for trade, officials said that they have "not taken any precipitous actions" and have maintained Trump-era tariffs, but they maintained it is "not because we believe the trade war was successful, but because we believe we have to very carefully, in consultation with allies and partners, in consultation with Congress, work through the leverage we have on the economic front and move out with a sharper, and more effective trade strategy toward China."

Officials said the Biden administration is keeping the tariffs put in place under the Trump administration while they conduct "an intense consultation and review."

"We are keeping them in place until we are ready to roll out an affirmative trade strategy built on the proposition that we are better off executing jointly with allies rather than by ourselves," the official said. "That is going to take some time."

Officials rejected suggestions that they were engaging in a "continuation" of Trump-era policies, saying "there will be changes to trade policy toward China," which will "unfold" over time.

"We need a substantially different strategy toward China, but one that does point in the direction of intense strategic competition," the official said. "That is the strategy that the Biden Administration will pursue."

Officials said that in order to "effectively prevail" in competition with China, the U.S. needs to "compete from a position of strength."

"This is something that from our perspective is a sustainable strategy that will play out, not over the course of days or weeks or even months, it will play out over the course of years," one official said. "That doesn’t mean there isn’t urgency. There is urgency and we are acting urgently, but also means that we need to stick with this and we need to play the long game, and in playing the long game, we need to be making these investments in these foundational components of the strategy now — effectively, comprehensively, decisively, and in a way where we are gathering the additional sources of strength we need to be able to prevail over time."