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© Thomson Reuters 2024.Biden blames China, Japan and India's economic woes on 'xenophobia'
By Trevor Hunnicutt WASHINGTON©2025 GPlusMedia Inc.
41 Comments
rzadigi
As an American I do agree that immigration has been great for America. But adopting similar policies does not work for every country. Immigration has clearly failed in many European countries.
And the best and the brightest of many countries still feel the urge to come to America. This is clearly not the case with China, Japan and India.
Rakuraku
Not to want immigration the US and European way and being xenophobic is totally different. On top of that everyone living in Japan can see the spectacular change when it comes to immigration over the past 5 years. Foreigners are everywhere: Combini (90% of the staff), cheap restaurants chains, hotels…etc).
Fighto!
It's really disappointing for Biden to say that Japan is xenophobic. It appears that he said this for political reasons. The Republicans will probably pick up on this and claim he "hates Japan."
Japan, as a sovereign. democratic nation has the right to allow whoever they want into the country. They do not have to follow a policy of immigration like the USA - they are managing just fine without it.
Agent_Neo
Immigrants are necessary to create a society with severe inequality like the United States.
Are Americans happy if they live in fear of getting sick, fearing crime, and fearing being shot?
America may have room for immigrants, but the majority will be weeded out by death.
Furthermore, although the EU accepts refugees, some countries' societies are collapsing. Policies differ from country to country, and so do the people's wishes.
Unilaterally imposing American ideas is nothing more than interference in internal affairs.
WoodyLee
Thank you sir, the FREE WORLD was built by Immigrants is what Mr. Biden needs to remind them of.
WoodyLee
Sorry but what's in China, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and many other countries that migrants could find to improve their and their families lives??
I don't see any benefits at all, even people from these nations are migrating to the Free world.
OssanAmerica
Japan, historically isolationist and an island country is indeed "more" xenophobic than many other countries. But there are 3.2 million foregners living in Japan as of June 2023, which does not really reflect "xenophobia".
While immigration is stricter in Japan than other developed countries it does not suffer from the over immigration problems of the US and EU nations resulting from their wife open door policies.
While techninally Biden may be right, it was utterly stupid for his speechwriters to include Japan in a list that cites Russia and China. Two nations whose citizens are fleeing to other countries by both legal and illegal means. Furthermore the concept that nations like China and India with the largest populations in the world should be more open to immigration is puzzling at the least.
Jimizo
It is xenophobic. China is even worse. I don’t have enough experience of India to comment.
Whatever Biden’s reasons for saying this, he is accurate on Japan and China.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Immigrants don't have any impact on inequality. That's like saying having lots of kids causes inequality.
Considering 90% of Americans have health insurance, you don't die from property crime, and homicide is not even in the top 10 causes of death, yes we are pretty happy.
Is this more of the irrational fear of death at work? Clearly the immigrants don't think so.
TaiwanIsNotChina
China is growing old, isn't it?
Meiyouwenti
It’s time for the doddering old man to be replaced by another doddering old man in the November election.
Sh1mon M4sada
There's immigration, then there's ILLEGAL immigration. You wouldn't let just anyone through your front door....
Nibek32
The US does well by letting in illegal immigrants to work off the books for below wage jobs so that companies can be profitable.
It also results in a great degree of poverty and why America has a broken welfare system and homeless issue.
I don’t think Asian countries want to pursue such a convoluted strategy and most places do not view the current state of America as a success.
I say all of this as an American.
Asiaman7
It’s more capitalism than xenophobia.
Youths in Japan, China, and India have no desire to be underpaid factory slaves to corporations run by grossly overpaid elites.
dbsaiya
Right. And did you and Kishida talk frankly about this at the last circus in D.C.?
Fighto!
There are countless factories in those nations owned by multi-national corporations employing hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. And millions queuing up to work there - in the case of India and China.
The US-owned ones in China, such as Tesla and Apple, should not be there.
Donald Seekins
As any non-Japanese resident in Japan knows, this country has a problem with xenophobia. About China, India and Russia, I don't know. Biden routinely makes dumb comments about China because he's stoking up a second Cold War with the Middle Kingdom, and we know that he and his cronies dislike Russia (and would dislike Russia even if Moscow didn't invade Ukraine). If you asked Biden why he thinks China and Russia are so bad, he couldn't give you a coherent answer.
But why does he have to publicly criticize India and Japan for xenophobia when they, especially Japan, are much-needed allies of the US? As the leader of a sovereign state, he has NO business criticizing the internal affairs of other sovereign states. If Japan is afflicted with xenophobia, this is a matter Japan's leaders and public should address, not the old guy in the White House.
The answer: he's too old. His mind is fuzzy and he should NOT be running for a second term as President in November of this year.
Asiaman7
You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about, @Fighto/Isabelle.
—
“Why so many Chinese graduates cannot find work”
https://www.economist.com/china/2024/04/18/why-so-many-chinese-graduates-cannot-find-work
—
“Why China has too many graduates and not enough skilled workers”
https://www.thinkchina.sg/society/why-china-has-too-many-graduates-and-not-enough-skilled-workers
puregaijin
He’s right, but to a limited extent and in limited contexts. In addition to numbers what also matters is the quality of immigration. Skilled professionals (or even unskilled labor) who will pay tax as well as contribute positively to local society , of course. But what’s happening at the US border is a bit scary.
deanzaZZR
What is even going on here?
2024 economic growth projections by IMF
India 6.8%
China 4.6%
USA 2.7%
Japan 0.9%
Befuddled is the word that comes to mind when thinking about Old Joe.
JJE
There he goes again.
As usual, he is misinformed and wrong.
IMF has twice upgraded Russia's growth forecasts.
India is predicted to have the highest growth of all G-20 nations.
Nothing that comes out of his mouth makes sense.
factchecker
Joe is correct, however who the hell would want to choose to move to China or India?
Despite all Japan's problems it's not a bad place to put roots down.
kibousha
Neo-liberal global-capitalists love immigrants, how else are they going to keep wages low and profit high ? And have scapegoats for whenever things go wrong. Blame the immigrants for X. Blame the bigots for Y.
Fighto!
Well argued.
And the fact that foreign workers can "put roots down" firmly in Japan shows up the claim that "Japan is xenophobic" as patently false.
TokyoLiving
Good old murika blaming the world for the evils it has always initiated..
Utterly pathetic..
LOL
kohakuebisu
I see he did not mention the UK or Germany as having high growth thanks to their high immigration.
rcch
Take it easy, Joe, you’re not supposed to say it out loud, smdh. Seriously though, why criticize Japan (one of the closest, most important allies…), China, India and Russia and put them all in the same bag(?!)—doesn’t make sense; Japan is very unique and shouldn’t be compared to countries with an abysmal quality of life and less freedom. Is Japan xenophobic? I don’t know if that question can be answered with a yes or no. What I do know is that Japan is one of the (very) few countries left in the world where you can actually feel safe, where you can truly feel like you’re living in one of the best countries in the world—draw your own conclusions.
Sven Asai
Of course he only uses the current economic strength for his agenda. US had also downturns, in the 1920's, oil crisis, Lehman brothers issues and so on. It's just not at all related, economic success and immigration or xenophobia. So the question is where the current success stems from. IMO the main two reasons are that the AI hype is led by big US players. That will fall onto feet when this irrational bubble bursts, as AI cannot work intrinsically. The second reason is also well-known, the whole rest of the West collects or stands in row behind the leading capitalist nation which US of course is, due to war situations or rising conflicts in Ukraine , Middle East, Taiwan, South China Sea neighborhood and such. This also explains the relative dollar strength and stable economy in US, btw despite immigration and not because of it. Well, when hearing him I would say it's time for November elections already in May, isn't it?
rcch
Note:
Japan is NOT the US… and that’s a good thing.
OKuniyoshi
Xenophobia, is fear of other races/fear of people from other countries. Included in it, is, fear of other races becoming better than you/people of other races, from other countries over taking you. So, to conclude, just take a look at the actions that America/Biden admin has taken against other countries/ countries which come close to overtaking America. Talk about hypocrisy.
wolfshine
Mixed feelings on this.
For one thing, Biden is a clown and the United States has attrocious immigration policy. Great cities like New York and Chicago have been totally overwhelmed by illegal immigrants. They're all homeless and standing on street corners, holding signs begging for money.
However, while I generally agree with Japan's immigration policy, I feel a public verbal slap on them from a sitting US President was a long time coming and kind of deserved honestly. YES, Japan is declining culturally and becoming economically irrelevant. They absolutely have the right to put their own people first, but anyone denying the existence of xenophobia in Japan is flatout lying. This society is exclusionary in just about every conceivable manner. They kept their borders closed for a year and a half longer than any other country due to Covid. They have signs on restaurants doors telling foreigners staff basically won't even try to communicate with them in any other language but Japanese. Foreign workers such as English teachers continue to make abysmal wages and have downright shameful working conditions, and they are far from the worst example one can look to. Every month there is a new moral panic in Tokyo, over IRL live streamers, Halloween/New Years parties in Shibuya, tourists taking pictures of popular things, ect. Somehow, all of these things have one common denominator, and that's that all of them somehow involve lots of foreigners.
The problem with Japan is that they go out of their way to ignore or shut down solutions implemented in other societies that improve quality of life. They falsely believe that they are cleaner, smarter, and more morally righteous. Their society is a bigger echo chamber than pretty much any political organization or club out there, and often times the media just straight up lies, like not even distortions of the truth, but literal falsehoods or manufactured problems. Meanwhile, every piece of technology in Japan was invented somewhere else. They are incapable of innovation here. If America collapses, what happens to Japan? The truth is, the Japanese are not leaders - they are followers. It will always be that way. Edo stagnated as a civilization until the West basically rescued them out of their isolationist trance.
We do not owe Japanese the right to be coddled so their feelings can be protected. They need to wake up and get the control out of the hands of sluggish, intransigent old people and into the hands of open-minded, energetic, dynamic young people. At the rate things are currently going, the US WILL outlast Japan economically and culturally.
quercetum
It isn’t Xenophobia but Ilithiophobia. I can tell you the Chinese are quite impatient and have a strong and persistent intolerance of stupidity. They prefer those who are smart, creative and quick thinkers.
Elon Musk recently visited Beijing. He had two choices: protectionism or innovation. Biden with Huawei, Tik Tok and Japan’s interest in U.S. Steel responds with the former, but Elon with the latter.
Musk has many faults but deep down the man detests protectionism and wants to have the best product fairly.
So he decided to gain back his edge with autonomous driving. Yet like all autonomous systems the key requirement is data, the oil of the 21st century.
To train such a system, you need data and China has so much data it is excreting data through its chrysanthemum.
So Musk asked China to provide him access to data to develop his algorithms.
China said Hao but on the condition that Baidu (GPS system) partners with Tesla and the data centers all be built in China.
Musk said, deal.
These are smart people negotiating a win win situation. It doesn’t matter if you’re a foreigner in China if you’ve got game.
Chabbawanga
Why would anyone take advice from this geriatric, warmongering fool?
Jaswinder Sandhu
I think, it is more of Cheno/Chinophobia for Americans than "Xenophobia"!
Baradzed
It’s all about high-skilled migrants. They are making the real economic difference in the long run. For these people Japan is by far easier to migrate than into the US or even EU etc. However, Japan is not attractive for them due to low wages and, most importantly, its rigid hierarchical labor structure with little incentives for initiative and creativity. Xenophobia has nothing to do with that.
Illyas
GDP isn't everything. I think having a high-trust society is worth some amount of economic trade-off, at least.
wolfshine
I have always hated Joe Biden, but the fact he actually said this brought him up a few points in my book.
To clarify, I still don't agree with the point he's trying to make. But I think I like the effect his comments will have.
In today's age, all I ever see or hear about Japan is how much better their society is than the West, and how Japan shouldn't let people like me live here because we will supposedly infect and destroy Japan from within, as though we're a parasite or some kind of disease.
Any discussion surrounding foreigners in Japan and Japan's approach towards them has become so unbelievably toxic and nasty. "Pick-Me!" Foreigners attack disillusioned foreigners sick of making less than McDonalds employees in the States, and the media continues to stoke unnecessary fear and hysteria surrounding tourists.
If westerners hadn't come to Japan in the mid-1800s, let's be real, this country today wouldn't look much different than Thailand or Malaysia.
We invented trains. We invented cars. We invented electricity, and planes, and semiconductors, and the internet. Japan invented sushi and Pokemon.
Import the third world, become the third world. But import the first world, become the first world!
Time to get real.
isabelle
I certainly agree with the comments that putting Japan/India/China/Russia all together is very odd. I can only think it's pre-election posturing from Biden, like his opposition to the Nippon Steel deal despite the union moving ahead with negotiations.
Yes, modern America was built in large part by immigrants, but each country has to find their own balance. For instance, immigration in Europe is a double-edged sword, and is the source of much tension. Japan similarly has to find its own balance: what that will be I don't know, but I'm sure immigration will become more accepted over time.
No, he doesn't detest protectionism. He detests losing money, and Tesla is doing much more poorly in China (and elsewhere) than he expected so he's trying to turn it around by kowtowing to the Emperor again for a bigger piece of the totalitarian pie. He supports protectionism when it protects him.
https://fortune.com/asia/2024/01/25/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-warns-china-evs-competitive-protectionism-demolish-competition/
And China is using him -- along with many other foreign companies -- as a useful idiot, as it has done for a few years now.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63196452
Chabbawanga
Ally means nothing to the US. The alliance with Japan will end when Japan is forced to capitulate on their continued buying of US debt.
Redemption
The US economy is doing well because of incredible productivity growth year after year. That’s what Mr. Biden’s focus on.
OssanAmerica
Maybe so, but....
The worst that can happen with Biden is that he retires (or passes away) while in office.
The worst that can happen from having Trump back in office again, based on his past history, is unimaginably horrifying.