Biden says ‘I’m not concerned about China’ at press conference

WASHINGTON — President Biden turned heads Wednesday by declaring “I’m not concerned about China” during a rare White House news conference — drawing quick condemnation from Republican critics.

Biden made the remark when asked about US efforts to spur domestic manufacturing with last year’s $280 billion bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which was passed to counter growing Chinese dominance of the semiconductor sector.

“My desire to increase US manufacturing and jobs in America is not about China,” Biden said at a Rose Garden press conference with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol. “I’m not concerned about China.”

The CHIPS and Science Act “wasn’t designed to hurt China,” the president went on. “It was designed so we didn’t have to worry about whether or not we had access to semiconductors.”

Congressional supporters of the bill explicitly cited China as the reason for its existence last year. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), for example, described it as part of a broader effort to “outcompete China.”

Biden’s remark, made at his first domestic press conference of 2023, drew swift criticism from Republicans.

“We know this. That’s the problem,” tweeted Michele Perez Exner, an aide to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

“This is who House Democrats support for President. No wonder they are unable tell you ‘why’ they support him,” wrote Will Reinert, press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Other social media users noted the Biden family’s business interests in China, with one Twitter commentator writing that Biden wasn’t concerned about China “[b]ecause they own you…,”

“Translation: I love China – they give me money!” another wrote.

House Republicans are investigating President Biden’s role in his son Hunter and brother James Biden’s foreign business dealings in countries including China and Ukraine — and routinely say first family finances may explain the president’s allegedly lax attitude toward China on matters such as determining the origins of COVID-19, which killed more than 1 million Americans after possibly leaking from a Wuhan lab, and stopping Chinese fentanyl exports, which killed about 196,000 Americans from 2018 to 2021.

Hunter Biden co-founded state-backed investment fund BHR Partners in 2013, within weeks of joining then-Vice President Joe Biden aboard Air Force Two on an official trip to Beijing.

The company was registered just 12 days after the Bidens arrived in China’s capital, according to the Wall Street Journal, and while in Beijing, Hunter introduced his dad to incoming BHR CEO Jonathan Li. Joe Biden later wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s children.

Throughout 2021, then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Hunter Biden was still working to “unwind” his 10% stake in BHR, which says it manages $2.1 billion in assets. Late in the year, Hunter’s attorney Chris Clark claimed the divestment was complete. However, online records do not reflect a new owner of the stake and neither Hunter nor the White House would provide further information.

In a second Chinese venture, Hunter and James Biden received at least $4.8 million in 2017 and 2018 from a partnership with CEFC China Energy, a since-defunct reputed arm of Beijing’s “Belt and Road” foreign influence campaign, according to a Washington Post review of records from the first son’s abandoned laptop.

A May 2017 email about the CEFC partnership described the “big guy” as being due a 10% cut. Two former Hunter Biden associates, Tony Bobulinski and James Gilliar, separately identified Joe Biden as the “big guy” and Bobulinski says he met with Joe Biden in the same month to discuss the deal.

An October 2017 email also identifies Joe Biden as a participant in a call about Chinese energy company CEFC’s attempt to purchase US natural gas.