“I don’t want to contain China,” he said at a news conference in Vietnam accusing Beijing of “beginning to change some of the rules of the game” in international relations. The US president also said that he met Chinese premier Li Qiang at the G20 summit in India and discussed “stability” with him.

“We talked about stability… it wasn’t confrontational at all,” Joe Biden said in Hanoi, where he struck a cooperation deal with Vietnam aimed at countering Beijing’s influence.

Joe Biden also said China “has a difficult economic problem right now for a whole range of reasons that relate to international growth and lack thereof, and the policies that China has followed.”

“I don’t think it’s going to cause China to invade Taiwan, in fact maybe the opposite, probably doesn’t have the same capacity as it had before,” he added.

The US president also addressed growing tensions between the world’s two largest economies over their technological ambitions.

“I’m not going to sell China, material that would increase their capacity to make more nuclear weapons or engage in defense activities that are contrary to what is viewed as most people’s think was a positive development in the region,” he said.

On Joe Biden’s visit to Vietnam, US deputy national security advisor Jon Finer said that the two sides are expected to announce new cooperation on semiconductors. They will also hold detailed talks on supplies of rare earth minerals used in the manufacture of high-tech devices such as smartphones and electric car batteries, he said.

National security advisor Jake Sullivan said that Joe Biden would raise issues related “to freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and other basic human rights”.