What Did Biden Mean by His No Comment on China?

BUCK: Clay and I both immediately honed in on this. This was a moment where a question got asked that… Well, here’s what Biden said about his reaching out to China one way or the other. Listen.

BUCK: Not prepared to comment on that at the time. That’s a pretty straightforward, “Yes, I’m urging them to.” Now, we don’t want to read too much into this, but it does seem noteworthy, Clay, that he felt like he didn’t want to show his hand on this. It’s certainly worth noting as well the entire world, effectively, has been trying to sanction North Korea into compliance, into submission for a very long time. It does not work.

We have leverage, but it has not brought about desired result. And the reason for that is China. China allows North Korea… China could shut down North Korea effectively tomorrow, could make the country economically effectively null, it could annihilate it if it wanted to economically, but they don’t. Russia has an outlet here to China during the sanctions phase, and that could be very important going forward.

CLAY: I think this is maybe the most fascinating bit of news we have gotten from the White House specifically. Now, there wasn’t any question about Taiwan or concern there, but when you consider Biden’s address where he made it so paramount the number of people that he was interacting with around the world… I mean, they’re making a big deal of the fact that the sanctions are taking place in the euro, in the dollar, in the yen, in all of the major currencies of the world.

He talked, certainly, about the NATO commitment. I believe he mentioned Japan and Korea specifically, South Korea, obviously, and so China was notable for its omission. That was a very good question that was asked, and it doesn’t really make any sense, the answer that Biden gave, if things are going well with China right now. Because there shouldn’t be any reason why that would be classified information.

You would think that the United States would want China to bring whatever power it has to bear on Russia too. And if there is some sort of alliance behind the scenes between China and Russia, it makes it more likely also that we get a Taiwan impact. But this would also, Buck, mean that the power of the sanctions, if they’re not involving the second biggest economy in the world?

Well, you’re creating a new axis of Russian power, where, in theory — if they can’t sell their assets to Europe or the United States or any of those allied democratic countries — there’s a big marketplace in China where these two countries could be able to interact. So I thought, by far, that’s a big story. We need to know more about what’s going on right now between the United States, China, and Russia, as part of that tripartite relationship.