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In his unsuccessful reelection campaign, President Donald Trump repeatedly warned that a Joe Biden victory would be a victory for China and that Beijing would “own America.”
Despite that rhetoric, there is little indication that Beijing will find Biden a soft alternative to Trump, who dramatically changed the narrative for America to take on the world’s second-largest economy in his last year in power.
Even before Trump took office, the last Democratic administration of President Barack Obama and then Vice President Biden had significantly hardened its attitude toward China.
After initial efforts to get Beijing involved, the Trump administration took this further, strongly rejecting China’s efforts to extend its influence globally, earning some grudging praise from Biden’s advisers despite an election campaign. hard fought.
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Biden has not presented a detailed strategy for China, but all indications are that he will continue the tough focus on Beijing.
Diplomats, analysts and former officials who advised Biden’s campaign expect a more measured tone after the threats fired by Trump and an emphasis on “strategic competition” rather than direct confrontation.
That said, Biden has at times gone even further than the outgoing president in attacking China.
He has referred to Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “bully” and vowed to lead an international campaign to “pressure, isolate and punish China.” His campaign has also called China’s actions against Muslims in Xinjiang “genocide,” a step beyond current policy, with significant implications if that designation is formalized.
“The United States has to get tough on China,” Biden said in an article published in March as the coronavirus pandemic, which began in the Chinese city of Wuhan, took hold.
“The most effective way to meet that challenge is to build a united front of US allies and partners to confront China’s abusive behavior and human rights violations.”
In the same sentence, Biden also wrote about seeking “to cooperate with Beijing on issues where our interests converge, such as climate change, non-proliferation and global health security.”
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‘They are going to be great debates’
Reconciling those goals will be the key challenge, with the potential to spark the kind of squabbles between hardliners and pragmatists seen in the Trump administration.
“There will be great debates,” said a former senior Obama administration official who worked closely with Biden in the past.
“You will have people on the Biden team who will say that China represents a systemic threat to the United States and that we have to treat them as such, and there will be pragmatists who say, ‘We are in the middle of a pandemic, climate change is accelerating.’ , we have to work with them. ‘
While the outgoing administration’s tendency often seems to be to launch unilateral attacks on Beijing and then intimidate allies and partners into supporting them, Biden will attempt to engage allies early on and reassert US leadership through the international institutions that Trump scorned.
Biden’s top advisers told Reuters he would immediately consult with key allies before deciding on the future of the tariffs on China, seeking “collective leverage” to strengthen his position.
“China’s policy under the Biden administration will be more predictable and strategic,” said Wendy Cutler, a former US diplomat and trade negotiator.
“The days of advisers rushing to implement what they learned through presidential tweets will be long gone. The days of throwing one sanction after another on the wall and seeing what’s left without a strategic framework will also be over.”
While analysts say much of the specifics of China’s future policy will depend on who Biden appoints to key positions, a focus on rebuilding damaged alliances will be a fundamental principle.
Top contenders and Biden himself emphasize that to work, the approach must be backed by domestic investment to ensure a competitive advantage for the United States over China in key technologies such as quantum computing, artificial intelligence and 5G.
Michele Flournoy, a belligerent aspiring defense secretary, warned that the economic damage caused by the pandemic means that future defense budgets will flatten or worsen, while emphasizing the need for US forces to be able and willing to deliver. with any deterrent threat.
“If the US military had the ability to credibly threaten to sink all of China’s military ships, submarines, and merchant ships in the South China Sea within 72 hours, Chinese leaders might think twice about, say, launching a blockade or invasion of Taiwan. ” “he wrote in the June issue of Foreign Affairs.
Kurt Campbell, the top US diplomat for East Asia in the first Obama administration, told the Policy Exchange think tank in London on October 28 that Washington faced “a period of deep strategic competition” with China and it was vital to have a united approach at home to dispel the notion that America was in “precipitous decline.”
“We have to convince other countries that we have our own house in order, which we do not have now,” he said. “Some degree of bipartisanship when we think of China and Asia will be essential … Without it, in all likelihood we will fail.”
