Biden says China\'s \'not competition for us\'

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NO USE ABC AMERICA, FOX, CNN, UNIVISION, TELEMUNDO, BBC AMERICA, NBC, OR THEIR DIGITAL/MOBILE PLATFORMS.~** ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) Former Vice President Joe Biden, while on the campaign trail in Des Moines, Iowa, told supporters that China is "not competition for us," drawing rebukes from Republicans.

"'China is going to eat our lunch?'

C'mon, man," Biden said.

"They can't even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east, I mean in the west.

They can't figure out how they're going to deal with this corruption that exists within the system.

They're not bad folks, folks, but guess what… they're not… they're competition for us." On Twitter, Sen.

Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican who was the GOP's president nominee in 2012 trying to unseat Biden and then-President Barack Obama, rejected Biden's comments.

"This will not age well," Romney wrote.

Biden, who spent more than three decades as the U.S. senator from Delaware, entered the 2020 Democratic White House race last week as the front-runner to win the Democratic nomination, joining 20 others vying for attention in the battle for the right to challenge Republican President Donald Trump.