Biden to raise China and Russia ‘challenges’ in speech to US public days after Blinken visits Beijing

US President Joe Biden will discuss “challenges” posed by Russia and China in an annual speech next week, just two days after his top diplomat meets with counterparts in Beijing, a White House official said on Tuesday.

Biden “is a president who … has really rallied [international] partners, particularly the Nato alliance, in response to Russia’s war, and who has put so much effort into making sure that we’re ready to meet across the globe the challenge posed by the PRC”, said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

The comments about Russia and China featuring prominently next week in Biden’s State-of-the-Union address – airing during evening prime-time hours and aimed at the general public – came after a statement by Russia’s foreign ministry that Chinese President Xi Jinping intends to visit Moscow.

Beijing’s refusal to condemn Russia at the outset of the war that started nearly a year ago was one of the reasons that Nato last year identified China as a “systemic challenge to Euro-Atlantic security” in the alliance’s strategic concept – a key document that sets its military and security strategy for the next 10 years.

The speech itself follows on the heels of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s planned meetings in Beijing on Sunday, which will be the highest-level engagement between the two sides since Biden and Xi met on the sidelines of the G20 leaders’ summit in Indonesia last year.