BEIJING (AP) — U.S. Vice President Joe Biden opened a two-day visit to China today by urging young Chinese students to challenge their government, teachers and religious leaders.
Arriving midday in Beijing, Biden paid a visit to the U.S. embassy, where he surprised Chinese citizens waiting to get visitor visas processed in the embassy’s consular section. Thanking a group of mostly young people for wanting to visit the U.S., Biden said he hoped they would learn during their visit that “innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.”
“Children in America are rewarded — not punished — for challenging the status quo,” Biden said. “The only way you make something totally new is to break the mold of what was old.”
The vice president seemed to be alluding to the authoritarian rule of China’s government as he described a liberal and permissive intellectual culture in the United States.
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