Former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday once again downplayed the notion China poses a threat to the United States, telling South Carolina supporters it’s “bizarre” to say the communist regime posses any competition.

Biden make the remark in a speech as he listed off a series of domestic challenges that face the Communist state, including the country’s struggles with providing drinking water to some of its nearly 1.4 billion people.

“China doesn’t have enough water,” Biden began. “They’re talking about spending hundreds of billions of dollars to try to turn around a river so their population has portable water to drink.”

Biden explained that 40 percent of China’s arable land suffers from degradation, hindering its ability to feed the country.

“They’re in a situation where they have two million Uyghurs, Muslims, in prison camps in the mountains,” the presidential candidate went on. “You see what’s happening in Hong Kong.”

“The idea that they are our competition, that they’re going to beat us, is bizarre,” he then judged.

Biden’s remarks echoed similar ones he made in January while on the campaign trail in Iowa.

“We talk about China as our competitor, we should be helping and benefiting ourselves by doing that,” he told supporters in Ames at the time. “But the idea that China is going to eat our lunch — It’s like I remember the debates in the late nineties — remember Japan was going to own us? Give me a break.”

In May, Biden scoffed at the idea of China would overtake the U.S., citing the country’s widespread corruption problem.

“China is going to eat our lunch?” Biden asked during a campaign stop in Iowa City. “Come on, man… they can’t figure out how they’re going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system.”

“They’re not bad folks, folks… They’re not competition for us,” he added.

Biden’s soft stance on China comes amid scrutiny faced by his youngest son, Hunter, who has cut a series of lucrative business deals with the Communist regime while his father was vice president. In 2013, Hunter Biden’s investment firm scored a $1.5 billion investment deal with the Bank of China just days after he traveled with his father to visit the country.

Further, Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer’s bombshell book, Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite, reveals the younger Biden has ties with Burnham Financial Group — an entity used to do deals with secretive Chinese firms and oligarchs.

Breitbart News previously reported:

Burnham had business deals with two mysterious Chinese companies — Kirin Global Enterprises Limited and Harvest Global Investors, according to the book. Kirin Global Enterprises Limited was an investment vehicle run by Xiangyao (or Yaojun) “Larry” Liu and Guo Jianfeng, according to Schweizer. “Very little is known about Kirin or its two principals, other than the fact that they invest heavily in mainland Chinese real estate,” he writes. Harvest Global Investors was a Chinese investment firm linked to the government in Beijing. Burnham also had a financial relationship with Russian Oligarch Yelena Baturina, a billionaire with extensive political connections in Moscow and links to Russian organized crime, according to Schweizer. Archer said Baturina invested $200 million into “various investment funds” with which he was involved.

President Donald Trump has said China should also investigate the Biden family over allegations of corruption.

“China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as Ukraine,” the president stated in October.

“I’m sure that President Xi doesn’t like that kind of scrutiny, where billions of dollars is taken out of his country by a guy that got kicked out of the Navy,”he added. “You know what they call that? They call it a payoff.”