Biden tells China not to count out U.S. strength (Reuters)

CHENGDU, China (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday rejected views that American power is waning and said Washington would never default, wrapping up a China visit that has played down tensions between the world's two biggest economies.

"We are still the single best bet in the world, in terms of where to invest," Biden told a university audience in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, the southwest province that is the second and last stop of his visit to China.

"Please understand that no one cares more about this than we do, since Americans own 87 percent of all our financial assets and 69 percent of all our treasury bonds," Biden said, answering a question about U.S. debt.

"So our interest is not just to protect Chinese investment. We have an overarching interest in protecting the investment, while the United States has never defaulted and never will default."

"You're safe," he added.

Biden also used his speech to renew U.S. calls for Beijing to do more to rein in North Korea and Iran, whose nuclear ambitions have alarmed the West.

"The fact is, China and the United States face many of the same threats and share many of the same objectives and responsibilities," he said.

But his key theme was, as it has been throughout his five-day visit to China, economic: that the United States can reverse its high debt and low growth, and that China should play a part by buying more American-made goods and services.

"I also know that some of you are skeptical about America's future prospects. With that in view, I would like to suggest that I respectfully disagree with that view and will allay your concerns," said Biden.

He told the audience to remember that the United States was by far the largest economy in the world, about two and a half times as large as China's.

Biden and President Barack Obama, both Democrats, face re-election next year. Biden said the debate with Republicans over how to tackle U.S. fiscal problems would be at the heart of the 2012 presidential election.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is virtually certain to succeed Hu Jintao as Chinese President in early 2013, has hosted Biden during this visit. Obama administration officials have said they want to build trust with Xi ahead of the transition that begins in late 2012, when Hu gives up his post as general secretary of the ruling Communist Party.

Next year would need careful political footwork from both governments, said Biden.

"Both our countries are going through a political transition in 2012. It is very important, in my view, that we both are aware of the political sensitivities in each of the countries as they go through that," he said.

"NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT"

Sichuan province is a fast-growing example of the inland development that Beijing hopes will power the Chinese economy in coming decades -- and also a slice of the rising consumer power that Washington hopes will buy more U.S. goods and reduce a huge trade deficit with China.

With 80 million people, Sichuan enjoyed economic growth of 15.1 percent last year, according to government statistics.

Such economic concerns have dominated Biden's visit to China, which began on Wednesday, and has featured a succession of unusually vocal declarations of Beijing's confidence in the U.S. economy, despite Standard & Poor's recent downgrade of the sovereign credit rating of the United States.

China has quarreled with the United States on trade, Internet censorship, human rights and U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. While those thorny disputes have not disappeared, they appear to have been overtaken by a shared desire to show confidence and cooperation to a jittery global economy.

In Sichuan, Biden raised human rights in general terms.

"Liberty unlocks a people's full potential, and in its absence, unrest festers," he told the university audience.

Biden told Premier Wen Jiabao on Friday that China had "nothing to worry about" over the safety of its holdings of Treasury debt, and Wen voiced confidence in the resilience of the U.S. economy, troubled by debt worries and sluggish growth.

Analysts estimate two thirds of China's $3.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, the world's largest, are in dollar holdings, making it the biggest U.S. foreign creditor.

Biden will fly to Mongolia on Monday morning for a day before heading onto Japan.

(Writing and additional reporting by Chris Buckley and Michael Martina in Beijing; Editing by Yoko Nishikawa)

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US, Chinese basketballers brawl during Biden visit (AP)

BEIJING – A bench-clearing brawl at an exhibition game between American and Chinese basketball teams Thursday marred the orchestrated harmony of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's visit to China.

The fight between the Georgetown University men's basketball team and the Bayi Rockets on Thursday night in Beijing forced the game to end early. Biden did not attend the game. However, on Wednesday he watched the Georgetown team beat the Shanxi Zhongyu Brave Dragons 98-81.

Georgetown Hoyas head coach John Thompson III said in an emailed statement that the team regretted the incident.

"Tonight, two great teams played a very competitive game that unfortunately ended after heated exchanges with both teams," he said. "We sincerely regret that this situation occurred."

The brawl Thursday was the latest instance of on-court fighting by China, whose players have been fined tens of thousands of dollars by the world and Asian federations for scrapping with opponents.

Photos from the game circulating on China's popular microblog Sina Weibo show players from both teams pushing one another.

The Washington Post said the melee broke out in the fourth quarter as members of both teams tackled and threw punches at one another. Chairs and water bottles were also thrown as the Georgetown players left the court with about nine-and-a-half minutes remaining.

The Georgetown Hoyas are in China on a 10-day goodwill trip which has been cited by the U.S. State Department as an example of sports diplomacy that strengthens ties between the two countries' peoples. The team was briefed by the State Department ahead of its departure on what to expect during its trip to Beijing and Shanghai, according to news releases on the university's website.

"We remain grateful for the opportunity our student-athletes are having to engage in a sport they love here in China, while strengthening their understanding of a nation we respect and admire at Georgetown University," Thompson III said.

A U.S. Embassy official called it an "unfortunate" incident.

"We look to these types of exchanges to promote good sportsmanship and strengthen our people-to-people contact with China," the official said.

Earlier in the day, some friction also arose as reporters covering Biden's visit encountered some restrictions. During Biden's meeting with Chinese officials, White House press handlers believed they had an agreement that reporters would be permitted to remain in the room until Biden had completed his opening remarks.

However, Chinese security officers began telling reporters to leave while Biden was speaking, leading to whispered objections and some reporters being led from the room.

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Follow Gillian Wong on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gillianwong

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Biden out front in defending Obama on the economy (AP)

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The longest walk parents can make, Vice President Joe Biden often says, is upstairs to tell the children they've lost their job.

"Millions have been stripped of their dignity," Biden told an Ohio audience last year. "It's time to restore their dignity."

Biden, who spoke frequently of his blue-collar roots in Scranton, Pa., during the 2008 presidential campaign, is reprising his role as one of the Obama administration's top surrogates on the economy and an empathetic voice in industrial Midwestern states hard hit by the recession.

The former Delaware senator is expected to play a similar role in the 2012 campaign, focusing on Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. President Barack Obama carried them in 2008, but each elected Republican governors in 2010.

A large swath of the Midwest, including Iowa, Indiana and Wisconsin, which Obama also won, are considered prime targets for Republicans next year.

"He obviously has deep, deep roots in the industrial Midwest running from Pennsylvania right across and he'll be very valuable there," Obama strategist David Axelrod told reporters in Chicago this past week.

Biden, who was scheduled to speak at the Ohio Democratic Party's annual dinner Saturday, has assailed moves by GOP governors in Wisconsin and Ohio to strip away collective bargaining rights from most public workers.

He's also criticized efforts by Republicans in Congress to turn Medicare into a program with federal subsidies for beneficiaries who would seek coverage from private insurers.

The vice president has defended Obama's handling of the economy, pointing to tough decisions to seek an economic stimulus package and rescue U.S. automakers. But his pitch often turns personal, drawing on his father's decision to move the family to Delaware in the 1950s in search of a job.

"There's still a long way to go. There are still millions of women and men who are like the family I was raised in," Biden told Democrats in New Hampshire last month. "When a recession hit, we knew someone sitting around my dad's kitchen table ... was going to lose their job."

Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland said Biden "has the ability to express what a lot of people feel when it comes to their anxieties over the economy and job loss, their kids. I think he does a really good job of identifying with those concerns and expressing them."

Ahead of Biden's visit, Republicans countered that Obama's policies led to GOP gains in 2010 and have failed to revitalize the economy.

"All the visits in the world from President Obama, Vice President Biden and other top-level surrogates won't change the administration's job-killing policies," said Republican National Committee spokesman Ryan Tronovitch.

Largely under the radar, Biden has maintained a busy travel schedule, appearing in more than 150 political events in 2009 and 2010, including 20 in Ohio and 14 in Pennsylvania. In 2011, he had appeared at more than a dozen political events before the Ohio dinner.

Fundraisers planned for Monday in Atlanta and Nashville, Tenn., were postponed so Biden could meet with Senate leaders about efforts to increase the government's borrowing limit, aides said.

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Associated Press writer Deanna Bellandi in Chicago contributed to this report.

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Ken Thomas can be reached at http://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas

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