While Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are launching their White House drive, the essence of their campaign is to be the un-Trump ticket – unlike the president in every possible way.
But when it comes to what may be the biggest challenge of foreign policy – China – a Biden administration can come closer to Trump’s hard line than President Obama’s less confrontational strategy.
Besides, Biden is unlikely to follow the kind of hyper-enthusiastic, effusive bromance that Trump initially sought with Chinese President Xi Jinping, nor to participate in the angry tweets and bellicose threats on China that followed. Biden will seek to work with other peoples, instead of fighting with allies or taking unilateral actions like the one that marked Trump’s presidency.
“Their stylistic differences are so great. It will certainly look different, ”said James Mann, an expert in China and a colleague at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, referring to Biden and Trump.
However, he noted: “It will still be conflict-driven, perhaps sometimes confrontational, but certainly conflict-driven in ways that were not there or were downplayed a decade ago.”
A future President Biden would likely remain rigid about security concerns that have plagued China, although not cast in the same ideological terms as the Trump administration, said Evan Medeiros, professor of China relations at Georgetown University and an official of the National Security Council in the Obama administration.
On trade and commerce, Biden’s freedom of movement may be restricted by the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which is highly suspicious of free trade and closer to Trump over protectionism than many moderates within the party. That pressure could weigh on Biden’s efforts, for example, to re-establish the Obama-era Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement, which would have united around a dozen countries – excluding China. Trump jettisoned the pact in his first days on the job.
The agreement was at the center of Obama’s so-called pivot to Asia, a geopolitical effort to strengthen American leadership in the western Pacific and force Beijing to play by American rules. But the pact has never received enough support among Democratic lawmakers, and Biden has said he would not re-join the agreement in its current form, but would try to renegotiate it.
Biden has targeted Trump’s trade war with China, criticizing the barrage of tariffs and counter-tariffs by Beijing for hurting American farmers and manufacturers without changing Chinese behavior over fundamental industrial policies, such as government subsidies for companies in the state.
At the same time, with rates too high, thanks to Trump, Biden might not be in a hurry to undo them and charge them to pressure Beijing.
“I think a President Biden would be less openly antagonistic, but the substance may not change much,” said Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow specializing in China at the Conservative Heritage Foundation, who advised Trump on foreign policy.
Returning to President Nixon’s official visit to China in 1972, U.S. leaders from both parties sought to draw China into the nations’ family and foster closer democratic values by encouraging trade and investment, and sometimes darkening Beijing’s side to review when it came to human rights.
Today, most analysts view this approach as naive. China has turned into a global economic superpower and a military rival for American power in Asia. And rather than embracing Western reforms, Xi has been more aggressive in the world economy and more repressive at home. Across the board, he has dominated the Communist Party’s rigid teachings, harsh attacks on dissidents, on China’s Muslim minority and on Hong Kong.
Democrats and Republicans have become increasingly critical of Chinese behavior – from its widespread theft of intellectual property from American companies to aggressive military actions in the South China Sea.
In this new climate, it would be difficult or impossible for Biden to return to the China strategy he embraced when he served as Obama’s vice president.
“The China that faced Joe Biden in January of 2021 is far more powerful and formidable as an opponent than the China he and Obama treated until the end of 2016,” said Daniel Russel, a top Asian affairs official in the United States. Obama administration and now a vice president at the Institute of Asia Society Policy.
Mann said one thing a Biden presidency will inherit is a major hardening of China’s views within U.S. intelligence agencies, the FBI, the Department of Commerce and the Pentagon, which once had a policy of involvement.
“It’s a mistake to think that if Trump leaves, all the people who advocate for a tougher China policy will be gone,” Mann said. “The agencies and the interests they represent will still be there.”
In interviews, Biden’s current and former advisers to Biden have warned in recent weeks that Trump and his administration are cracking down on anti-China rhetoric and actions.
Trump has threatened to ban Chinese-owned social media platforms TikTok and WeChat, imposed restrictions on Chinese research students in the US, repeatedly cited COVID-19 as the “China virus”, and closed the Chinese consulate in Houston.
As President Biden may try to take US-China relations in a more positive direction, some suggest that Biden may return to more conventional diplomacy, and open the door to working with China on issues such as climate change and public health.
As a former member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Biden has repeatedly stressed his desire to restore America’s alliances in Europe and Asia, and its status in the world as a champion of democracy and a rules-based international order. . He has argued that the best way is to address China’s threat.
“The most effective way to tackle this challenge is to build a united front of US allies and partners to confront China’s abuses and human rights abuses, even as we try to work with Beijing. on issues where our interests come together, such as climate change, nonproliferation, and global health security, ”he wrote earlier this spring in Foreign Affairs.
‘On its own, the United States accounts for about a quarter of global GDP. If we participate together with other democracies, our power will more than double. China cannot afford to ignore more than half of the world economy. ”
In this way, Biden can try to take a middle-of-the-road approach that remains troubling about some issues in China while opening up communication channels that Trump has effectively shut down, excluding trade.
“I think you’re going to have a change of tone, an appreciation that you need to talk to China, like Nixon and Kissinger did,” said Medeiros, the Georgetown expert.
“But,” he added, “dialogue is not a concession, and negotiation is not accommodation.”
It remains to be seen whether diplomacy and international pressure will work towards an emboldened Chinese leadership. Beijing dismissed an international court ruling against its recommendations on the South China Sea, and Xi continued to impose a comprehensive security law on Hong Kong, despite warnings from the US and other countries.
Not surprisingly, U.S. attitudes have been more negative toward China, and that may also limit Biden’s hand.
“Every president in this country responds to public opinion,” said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Northridge), who nevertheless expects Biden to return the confrontation on the South China Sea.
Biden would likely hope to involve China in combating climate change, given that it is unthinkable that an effective agreement could have been reached while emitting the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
For Obama, climate change was such a top global priority that he backed other conflicts with China in exchange for Beijing’s help on the landmark Paris Climate Agreement, of which every country in the world was a part until Trump withdrew the US in 2017.
Beijing is a signatory, but has continued to shed many headlines about production of pollution and emissions of chlorofluorocarbons that destroy the earth’s ozone layer.
Bidding will also need to choose which policy to prioritize.
Biden’s aides suggest they will focus on a handful of goals such as trade, cyber-espionage and democracy, instead of what they describe as the Trump administration’s scatter-shot approach over the past four years.
“China sees itself in a strong position … a China on the rise,” said Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. “In my opinion, we will have to revitalize America so that China does not benefit from what it sees as an American weakness.”
