US President Joe Biden revealed, in a speech to the US Naval Academy’s graduating class, that Chinese President Xi Jinping warned him that democracies are on the decline and that “autocracies will run the world”.
Biden talked about a phone call he had with Xi Jinping the day he got elected to become the 46th President of USA. Talking about the phone conversation, the US President said, “We’re living through a global struggle between autocracies and democracies. When he called me to congratulate me on election night, he said to me what he said many times before. He said ‘Democracies cannot be sustained in the 21st century. Autocracies will run the world’. Why? ‘Things are changing so rapidly. Democracies require a consensus, and it takes time, and you don’t have the time’. He’s wrong.” Biden had recently travelled to Japan to meet with the leaders of the Quad.
The relationship between China and the United States has always been turbulent, with their differing government philosophies at the centre of those differences.
The most recent tensions between the countries has been around the issue of Taiwan which China believes to be a part of the its nation but has a separate government allied with the United States. During his meeting with Quad leaders, Biden reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to ensuring the security of the Taiwan Strait and preventing any change in the status quo unilaterally.
