Abstract: Opening Remarks by Fr. Joel E. Tabora, SJ:

Recently, the United States President Joe Biden delivered a speech at the United Nations General Assembly. Basically, his speech asserts that the future belongs to those who share the values of freedom, human rights, and democracy that America upholds. He called for unity among those who share the same values to address the major problems of the pandemic, climate change, and the egregious attacks on global political and economic structures that would protect equality, human dignity, and human rights.

In his talk, he never once mentioned China. But he clearly portrayed China as a counterfoil to American values that would seek advancement through the domination of the weak, through the expansion of its territory on land and on sea, through economic coercion and disinformation. He even spoke of investments in infrastructures in weak countries that was of low quality, corrupt, and destructive of the environment.

The reference to China was so clear that, shortly after, the President of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Xi Jinping, sent in a video message, rejecting the American portrayal of his government as authoritarian, predatory, and expansionist. He insisted that China supports peaceful development for all people. Democracy, he said, is not a special right reserved to an individual country like the United States of America (USA). There is a diversity of