Biden picks Clinton adviser Rosenberger as White House China director

[January 15, 2021]    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Laura Rosenberger, a State Department and White House veteran who was a foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton's unsuccessful 2016 presidential election campaign, will serve as senior director for China in Joe Biden's White House.

Rosenberger will report to Kurt Campbell, another Obama-administration veteran, who was named on Wednesday to be President-elect Biden's senior coordinator for Indo-Pacific policy at the White House National Security Council (NSC), a spokeswoman for Biden's transition said.

"Humbled by the enormity of the task and privileged to once again serve the American people alongside an incredible team," Rosenberger, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States think tank, said on Twitter on Thursday.

Rosenberger served previously as NSC director for China and Korea in the Obama White House and in a range of positions at the State Department and NSC, including as chief of staff to the then deputy secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who Biden has nominated to be his secretary of state.

Managing the relationship with China will be among Biden's biggest challenges.

Ties between the United States and China have plunged to the lowest level in decades in the last year of Donald Trump's presidency, and in the final days before Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20 the outgoing administration has announced a series of policy moves that have appeared aimed at locking in a tough approach towards Beijing.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Michael Martina; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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