China relieved as Ukraine crisis dominates Biden's first Union address

A relieved China on Wednesday gave Joe Biden's "don't bet against the American people" jibe against his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping a pass as the Ukraine crisis dominated the US President's maiden State of the Union address unlike the previous years where Beijing used to be a major theme.

Biden said the US and China were engaged in a race to "win the economic competition of the 21st century, and vowed that the US was embarking on an infrastructure decade, announcing plans this year to fix more than 65,000 miles of highway and 1,500 bridges in disrepair.

"I've told Xi Jinping, it is never a good bet to bet against the American people. We'll create good jobs for millions of Americans, modernising roads, airports, ports, and waterways all across America. We will do it all to withstand the devastating effects of the climate crisis and promote environmental justice," Biden said in his first State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

His remarks hardly ruffled any feathers here as the Chinese Foreign Ministry, which never let a US leader's remarks unchallenged gave it a pass in Wednesday's briefing.

While Russia and Ukraine dominated Biden's much awaited address, China remained a "subtext".

"Biden's one-hour speech contained just a handful of mentions for China. But the rising power, which his administration considers a major threat to US interests, was an unmistakable subtext to many of his comments about efforts to counter aggression by illiberal countries," the Hong Kong-based South Morning Post reported.

But as Biden spoke, a delegation of security officials headed by former US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen was in Taiwan where it held talks with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen amid apprehensions that Beijing may attempt action akin to Russia's military assault in Ukraine to capture the island.

On Tuesday, China, which claims Taiwan as part of its mainland and vows to integrate it, hit back at Washington for sending the security delegation and warned that the US will pay a "heavy price" for its attempts to show support to Taiwan's independence.

However, there were no references to Taiwan in Biden's address nor anything adverse China deemed fit to react.

Biden's low-key remarks against China, especially when Washington and its European Union allies were carrying out a major campaign against Beijing for its human rights violations in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, besides Beijing's aggressive assertions to integrate Taiwan, came amid projections by Chinese strategic experts that Beijing may get relegated to backseat in US calculations after Ukraine crisis.

"No doubt, the unfolding crisis (in Ukraine) has added a new dynamic to China's tortuous relations with the US and its Western allies," Wang Xiangwei, the noted columnist of the Post, wrote in his latest column.

"As the crisis is set to consume the attention of Washington and Brussels and other capitals of the world for the next few years, it is very likely that their united front pressure against China will ease," he said.

"Of course, it is naive to think that Washington's focus on Russia would lead to any fundamental shift in its relationship with Beijing, like it did more than 20 years ago," he said.

"That ship has already sailed as confronting China was one of the few things that united the politicians in Washington before the Ukraine crisis," he said.

"But Beijing will certainly gain more room to manoeuvre and more geopolitical benefits if the conflict over Ukraine persists," he said.