Atlanta, April 18 (RHC)-- Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says Donald Trump has spoken with him about China because the current U.S. leader was worried that Beijing is outpacing the U.S. economically, saying America’s endless wars were helping China get ahead of the United States.
The 94-year-old former president said Trump called him while speaking at his regular Sunday School lesson at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia. He told the congregation that Trump feared China's growing economic strength and suggested the president was right to be concerned.
Some experts say China could overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy by 2030 if current growth trends continue. The former Democratic president said China was getting ahead of the United States because Washington has been at war with other countries for most of its history, while Beijing was taking advantage of peace to invest in its economy and industries.
Carter -- who normalized diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing in 1979 --suggested that China’s rapid growth had been facilitated by government investment and helped by peace. “Since 1979, do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody?” Carter asked. “None. And we have stayed at war.”
He said the U.S. has only enjoyed 16 years of peace in its 242-year history, making the country “the most warlike nation in the history of the world." This is, he said, because of Washington’s tendency to force other nations to “adopt our American principles.”
Carter said that China, in contrast to the U.S., had made massive economic progress for maintaining peace. “How many miles of high-speed railroad do we have in this country?” he asked. The U.S. has “wasted, I think, $3 trillion” on military spending. “It’s more than you can imagine. China has not wasted a single penny on war, and that’s why they’re ahead of us. In almost every way.”
“And I think the difference is if you take $3 trillion and put it in American infrastructure you’d probably have $2 trillion leftover. We’d have high-speed railroad. We’d have bridges that aren’t collapsing, we’d have roads that are maintained properly. Our educational system would be as good as that of say South Korea or Hong Kong,” Carter told the congregation.
Carter served as the 39th US president from 1977 to 1981. The former president has been particularly critical of the nation's direction under Trump’s leadership.
