Biden turns on Beijing: is China really a ‘ticking time bomb’?
US president warned that ‘when bad folks have problems, they do bad things’

Joe Biden has described China as a “ticking time bomb in many cases” because of the economic challenges it is facing.
Speaking at a political fundraiser in Utah, the US president cited China’s high unemployment and ageing workforce, saying “they have got some problems”. And “that’s not good”, he added, “because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things”.
Biden said he did not want to hurt China and wanted a rational relationship with the country, but his comments are “some of the most alarming yet that Biden has made about the US’s chief geopolitical rival”, said Bloomberg.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
What did the papers say?
Biden was correct that China is facing financial challenges. While the US has spent much of the past 18 months struggling to control inflation, China is experiencing the “opposite problem”, said The New York Times. People and businesses are “not spending”, which is pushing the economy to “the verge of a pernicious condition called deflation”.
Consumer prices in China fell in July for the first time in more than two years, the country’s National Bureau of Statistics announced this week. Deflation is “particularly serious” in a country with very high debt, like China, added the NYT, and Beijing has “pressured” its economists not to even mention the possibility of it.
Nevertheless, it was not immediately obvious what Biden meant by a “ticking time bomb”. Washington continues to fear that China will invade Taiwan and a “series of incidents in recent months”, including an alleged spy balloon and military encounters in the South China Sea, have “heightened tensions between the two countries”, said Bloomberg.
But Biden’s remarks came shortly after US secretary of state Antony Blinken completed a visit to China “aimed at stabilising relations” that Beijing described as being at their lowest point since formal ties were established in 1979, noted The Guardian.
Some believe his change of tone in Utah may have been more domestically calculated, as the prospect of an electoral rematch with Donald Trump looms. It’s “unclear what exact flashpoints Biden may have been considering”, said the New York Post, but Biden’s words came as he was “criticised by Republicans for not taking a more forceful approach toward China”.
Just 24 hours before Biden’s speech, Trump described the president as “fully compromised” and “so afraid of China”. Speaking to Newsmax, he said: “I believe that China has paid him a fortune. I’ve never seen anybody so weak on China.”
What next?
There are fears that relations between the two nations could lead to a new cold war.
The US announced this week that it will ban some US investment into Chinese quantum computing, advanced chips and artificial intelligence, as it “boosts efforts to stop the Chinese military from accessing American technology and capital”, said the Financial Times.
“The use of such curbs by the world’s strongest champion of capitalism” is new evidence of the “profound shift” in America’s economic policy as it contends with the rise of an “increasingly assertive and threatening rival”, said The Economist.
But such measures bring “neither resilience nor security”, it said, because supply chains have become “more tangled and opaque as they have adapted to the new rules”. America’s “reliance on Chinese critical inputs remains” and its policy “has had the perverse effect of pushing America’s allies closer to China”.
Beijing expressed “serious concern” about the ban, claiming that it “deviates from the principles of fair competition and the market economy that the US consistently advocates”. It said Biden’s measures were a sign of “anti-globalisation” and warned that it “reserves the right to take measures” in response.
Those words are ominous in the light of The Atlantic’s forecast in June that a “new cold war has come to seem all but inevitable” because “tensions” between China and the United States are “mounting in step with Beijing’s growing power and ambition”.
The “moment for opening a dialogue is now”, it said, while the US “still enjoys economic and military superiority”, and “while the two superpowers of the 21st century can still avoid the dangers and disorder that come with geopolitical rupture”.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.
-
July 12 editorial cartoons
Cartoons Saturday's political cartoons include generational ennui, tariffs on Canada, and a conspiracy rabbit hole
-
5 unusually elusive cartoons about the Epstein files
Cartoons Artists take on Pam Bondi's vanishing desk, the Mar-a-Lago bathrooms, and more
-
Lemon and courgette carbonara recipe
The Week Recommends Zingy and fresh, this pasta is a summer treat
-
Trump uses tariffs to upend Brazil's domestic politics
IN THE SPOTLIGHT By slapping a 50% tariff on Brazil for its criminal investigation into Bolsonaro, the Trump administration is brazenly putting its fingers on the scales of a key foreign election
-
'Trump's authoritarian manipulation of language'
Instant Opinion Vienna has become a 'convenient target for populists' | Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Trump set to hit Canada with 35% tariffs
Speed Read The president accused Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney of failing to stop the cross-border flow of fentanyl
-
Could Trump really 'take over' American cities?
Today's Big Question Trump has proposed a federal takeover of New York City and Washington, D.C.
-
Trump threatens Brazil with 50% tariffs
Speed Read He accused Brazil's current president of leading a 'witch hunt' against far-right former leader Jair Bolsonaro
-
Is the Trump-Putin bromance over... again?
Today's Big Question The US president has admitted he's 'p*ssed off' with his opposite number
-
SCOTUS greenlights Trump's federal firings
speed read The Trump administration can conduct mass federal firings without Congress' permission, the Supreme Court ruled
-
'The way AI is discussed makes it seem like this is a necessary outcome'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day