US President Joe Biden makes his way to board Air Force One before departing from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Feb 5, 2021. (MANDEL NGAN / AFP)

The White House on Wednesday vowed to build back better at home and reembrace international cooperation while stressing that "strategic competition" with China should not preclude collaboration. That message was set out in the interim national security strategy guidance of the administration of US President Joe Biden.

In the 24-page document released that day, Biden noted that many of the biggest threats the country faces respect no borders or walls and must be met with collective action.

Posing profound dangers are pandemics and other biological risks, the climate crisis, cyber and digital threats, international economic disruptions, humanitarian crises, violent extremism and terrorism, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.

"None can be effectively addressed by one nation acting alone. And none can be effectively addressed with the United States on the sidelines," Biden wrote in the guidance.

None can be effectively addressed by one nation acting alone. And none can be effectively addressed with the United States on the sidelines.

Joe Biden, US President

The document outlines a spectrum of challenges the Biden administration hopes to tackle, including the pandemic, "a crushing economic downturn, a crisis of racial justice and deepening climate emergency".

The interim strategy is expected to be followed by Biden's inaugural National Security Strategy, which will be released later this year, his Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.

Biden has signaled another reversal from his predecessor Donald Trump's "America First" strategy by recommitting to alliances and partnerships, but he seems to have kept an assessment from Trump's National Security Strategy that "economic security is national security".

He said the US will "again embrace international cooperation", including joining with the international community to tackle the climate crisis and other shared challenges and resuming US leadership in multilateral organizations.

Biden also stressed that the US' strength abroad derives from building back better at home, which should start by "decisively responding to the public health and economic crises unleashed by COVID-19".

The document singled out China and Russia as main threats and vowed to build up "enduring advantages" and present an agenda seeking to outcompete China and any other nation.

It calls China "the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system".

Despite the concerns of the US, Beijing has made it clear that it does not want to replace US dominance in the world.

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No zero-sum game

"The bilateral relationship is no zero-sum game; the success of one does not have to entail the other's failure," Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Feb 22 at a virtual forum held at the ministry.

Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai also said at the event: "China has had no intention whatsoever to challenge or displace any country, let alone make it its strategic goal."

At the same time, the interim strategy appeared to toe the line of Biden's consistent, pragmatic China policy since taking office: keep engaging China if it is in the US' interests.

"We also recognize that strategic competition does not, and should not, preclude working with China when it is in our national interest to do so," the document read, adding that renewing the country's advantages ensures engagement with China "from a position of confidence and strength".

It said Washington will conduct practical, results-oriented diplomacy with Beijing and work to reduce the risk of misperception and miscalculation.

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Contact the writer at huanxinzhao@chinadailyusa.com