Biden sees China as the only global rival to US

US President Joe Biden's administration said Wednesday it would prioritize winning over China, seeing it as the only global rival to the United States, even as it also works to constrain Russia.

"The post-Cold War era is over, and the competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next," Biden's National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, said in a speech at Georgetown University to unveil the national security strategy.

The strategy said the 2020s would be a "decisive decade for America and the world" -- for reducing conflict, promoting democracy over authoritarianism and confronting the key shared threat of climate change.

"We will prioritize maintaining an enduring competitive edge over the PRC while constraining a still profoundly dangerous Russia," the strategy said, referring to the People's Republic of China.

Vladimir Putin's Russia "poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its operation Ukraine has shown," the strategy claimed.

China, "by contrast, is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to advance that objective."

The release of the strategy was delayed by the Ukraine war, with Biden spending most of this year rallying allies against Russia and marshaling billions of dollars in weapons to Kiev, but it remains largely consistent with interim guidance laid out shortly after he took office in January 2021.

"I don't believe that the war in Ukraine has fundamentally altered Joe Biden's approach to foreign policy, which long predates his presidency," Sullivan earlier told reporters.

"But I do believe that it presents in living color the key elements of our approach -- the emphasis on allies, the importance of strengthening the hand of the democratic world and standing up for our fellow democracies and for democratic values," he said.

The strategy claimed the United States was willing to work even with competitors on shared interests, amid the Biden team's talks with China on climate change, described as "the existential challenge of our time."

ME