Some people are saying, 'Well, we're so competitive with China, we should end the economic relationship'. Well, the consequence of that would be 750,… - R. Nicholas Burns

The United States is, in many ways, the linchpin of NATO. It’s true, NATO is an alliance of equals, a collective defense alliance, and a political organization. But the United States, by virtue of its size and power, has always been the leader of the alliance.

One of the motivations for the CHIPS [Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors] and Science Act is to make sure that we’re not only competitive in semiconductors, but that we actually have fabs in the United States that are world class. So that in a crisis, semiconductors – which are the building blocks of everything in a 21st century economy – are closer to home. The Chinese, I think in a way, have also learned that lesson, as I look at what the government here is trying to do. They’re trying to alter supply chains, they’re trying to insulate themselves, hypothetically, from pressure from the rest of the world in the future.

The Biden administration encourages all of the Embassies to take part in the international debate… We have an embassy Weibo account, we have WeChat accounts, we have a Twitter account of 1.2 million followers, I have my own separate Twitter account. What we’re trying to do here is speak to the Chinese people and give them accurate information about us. We try to give the Chinese people an accurate portrayal of who we are as a country, what we believe in, and correct basic misstatements by their own government about us. There’s a powerful censorship body here. When Secretary Blinken gave his big speech on the US-China relationship, the major speech of this administration, it was censored on WeChat and Weibo within two hours. We put it back up a couple of days later and it was censored within 20 minutes. But in that two-hour span, and in that 20-minute span, you can get a lot of people looking at it. We believe in freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and we think that people have a right to free and accurate information. That’s our goal, and to show respect to the people of China, respect for their culture, and their civilization, their history.There are times we use our social media presence to debate the government here, to correct misstatements by the government, to criticize. So, I think we’re never going to live in a world where social media is not a presence.