China has never made it a national strategy to replace any other country, and it opposes dividing countries into different camps, Beijing"s top envoy in Washington said on Thursday, hours after US President Joe Biden said the East Asian nation aims to be "the most powerful" in the world.

Biden, in his first White House news conference, said China has an "overall goal to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world".

"Our goal is to meet the growing aspiration of the Chinese people for a better life. Our goal is not to compete with or replace any other country," Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai said.

"This is never our national strategy. Hopefully, people could have a better understanding of this," he said when asked by CNN"s Christiane Amanpour to comment on Biden"s remarks.

Biden also said that the US is "not looking for confrontation" with China, but there will be "steep competition" and insisted China play by the international rules such as fair competition, and that the US would re-establish its alliances, an effort he said he had told Chinese President Xi Jinping is "not anti-Chinese".

Cui said that what today"s world wants, and tomorrow"s world would want is to join efforts by all countries to build a community of nations for a shared future.

"We don"t think any attempt to divide the world into different camps or even build a confrontational military approach, we don"t think this kind of approach is a solution. Actually, this is a problem in itself," he said.