Political Quotes

“I wish to comment on the visit of Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi to Washington. This visit comes at an important time for the U.S.-China relationship and highlights the enormous stakes involved. As I have said in the past, China's rise offers great opportunity but also poses serious challenges. It is critical the U.S. do all it can to ensure that China's rise is peaceful and its trade practices fair, and under those conditions, the United States should welcome China's continuing emergence and prosperity. At the same time, we must remain prepared to respond should China's rise take a problematic turn. This means maintaining our military presence in the Asia-Pacific region, strengthening our alliances, and making clear to both Beijing and Taipei that a unilateral change in the status quo in the Taiwan Strait is unacceptable. Also, though today China's military spending is one-tenth of ours, we must monitor closely China's strategic capabilities while also pushing for greater transparency of its defense activities. Although we must remain vigilant in monitoring these potential developments, our two nations also should strive to build a relationship that broadens areas of cooperation where we share mutual interests, as we have done to respond to the nonproliferation challenge posed by North Korea. And we should strengthen our ability to manage our differences effectively.”