China Slams US over Biden ‘Xenophobic’ Claims

Beijing on Thursday accused the United States of hypocrisy in response to accusations by President Joe Biden that China is “xenophobic” and “cheating” on trade.
“I would like to ask him: are you talking about China or the US itself?” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said, when asked about the comments.
In a speech Wednesday to union members, Biden called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing it of cheating as he courted blue-collar voters on an election campaign trip to the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
“They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” the 81-year-old Biden said to cheers at the headquarters of the United Steelworkers union in Pittsburgh.
The Democrat said Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily”.
Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was confirmed to be using anti-competitive practices.
“They’re xenophobic,” he added. “They’ve got real problems. I’m not looking for a fight with China, I’m looking for competition — but fair competition.”
The United States also this week announced a probe into China’s trade practices in the shipbuilding, maritime and logistics sectors.
China’s commerce ministry hit back, saying the probe was “full of false accusations, misinterpreting normal trade and investment activities as harming US national security and corporate interests, and blaming China for its own industrial problems”.