Pence, Xi deliver dueling speeches
HONG KONG — Vice President Mike Pence and Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered dueling speeches Saturday that offered a window into how the two governments are seeking a truce over tariffs — but remain fundamentally at odds over economics, diplomacy and the race for global influence and primacy.
Pence, taking the stage shortly after Xi at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Papua New Guinea, launched a pointed and wideranging criticism of China, not just over its commercial practices but also over its transcontinental infrastructure projects and military activity in the South China Sea.
Reiterating U.S. commitment to Asia, Pence saved his most pointed words for Xi’s flagship foreign policy initiative — the infrastructure investment plan known as the Belt and Road Initiative — as he warned countries about accepting Chinese loans for port and transportation projects scattered from Pakistan to Indonesia.
“We don’t drown our partners in a sea of debt. We don’t coerce or compromise your independence,” Pence said. “We do not offer a constricting belt or a oneway road.”
The United States “offers a better option,” he said as he unveiled a new regional transparency initiative and $60 billion in U.S. investments for the region.
The Trump administration has voiced a far harder line against China and its growing footprint and rising assertiveness, spurring talk on both sides of the Pacific of a new cold war. But the U.S. president’s absence was conspicuous this week at two major Asian summits where Xi, instead, dominated the limelight.
The Chinese president delivered a more conciliatory address on Saturday as he warned that “confrontation, whether in the form of a hot war, cold war or trade war, will produce no winners.”
He dismissed criticism of his Belt and Road Initiative as a debt “trap” and instead positioned himself as a leader of the developing world who could help lift up poor countries in its orbit.
“Many of the entrepreneurs present here are witnesses, contributors and beneficiaries of China’s reform and opening up, and have formed an indissoluble bond with China,” said Xi, who appeared to make an oblique jab at U.S. criticisms of human rights abuses in Asia by defending alternative models of development.
“We should be less arrogant and prejudiced,” he said. “What kind of road a country takes, only the people of that country can decide.”
In Trump’s absence, Pence and national security adviser John Bolton have spoken forcefully about the U.S. agenda in Asia, with Pence sharply rebuking Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi over the treatment of Rohingya Muslims in her country.