US President Joe Biden has said that the country’s rivalry with China will become an extreme competition rather than a conflict under his presidency, reported AFP.

In an excerpt of a CBS interview aired on Sunday, Biden said that he has not spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping since he came in power.

“He’s very tough. He doesn’t have — and I don’t mean it as a criticism, just the reality — he doesn’t have a democratic, small D, bone in his body,” Biden said.

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“I’ve said to him all along, that we need not have a conflict. But there’s going to be extreme competition,” the president said.

“I’m not going to do it the way (Donald) Trump did. We’re going to focus on international rules of the road,” Biden added.

Washington considers Beijing as its number one strategic opponent on the world stage.

During his time in the White House, former US President Donald Trump had chosen open confrontation and verbal attacks, without serious s tangible results for the enormous US trade deficit with China.

The current president has systematically dismantled many of the more controversial measures of the Trump era, while at the same time signalling that the world’s greatest economy will closely look out for its own interests.