US elections; how will it affect relations with China?
Frans Verhagen
American foreign policy has more continuity than we often think. After all, strategic relations remain unchanged. Therefore, for the relationship between China and the United States, it matters little whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is elected in November. Of course there are differences at the margins and in rhetoric, but in practice it will make little difference. How is it viewed in China, how will a next president affect relations between the two superpowers? In this article, Frans Verhagen highlights this exciting event in world politics.
For reassurance, let’s start by noting that neither country directly threatens each other. The Pacific Ocean provides protection; nuclear weapons on both sides provide deterrence. A confrontation is more likely to occur on the fringes, with Taiwan being the biggest risk area.
American security thinking
Since Barack Obama’s 2011 “pivot to Asia,” a (modest) shift of resources to the Pacific, the relationship with China has been central to U.S. security thinking. In the National Security Strategy (NSS), an analysis the U.S. government is required to publish every four years, this relationship is now the benchmark.
Trump’s NSS, published in December 2017, called China and Russia “revisionist powers”: “The world is a battleground and China is ‘challenging American power, influence and interests, in an effort to undermine American security and prosperity.’
Four years later, Biden recognizes that “China is the only state whose goal is to reform the international order and also the only one with the economic, diplomatic, military and technical resources to do so.” The small but essential difference is in where this will lead; a clash ending with the dominance of one of the two (Trump) or a balanced relationship in which both countries recognize that this balance is in everyone’s best interest (Biden and Harris).
A new cold war?
According to some, there is talk of a new cold war, and Taiwan is the Berlin of old. But at the time, the Soviet Union was virtually outside the world economy and Berlin was important only as a symbol. The fact is that China and America are more mutually dependent than they would like, and Taiwan is the world’s leading producer of semiconductors. While trade policy was hardly relevant in the cold war, it is now a weapon of war. On the Chinese side, the cold war also has an important place in the consciousness: Xi is said to be obsessed with the demise of the Soviet Union.
International partnerships
From the NSS perspective, it was a logical move for America to bind the countries around the Pacific in a trade treaty in which China was not a party. President Obama achieved that with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), in which 13 states around the Pacific formed a bloc against China. Obama signed the treaty, but before it could be ratified, it fell victim to anti-globalism in America, both from Democrats and Republicans. Pressure from labor unions forced Hillary Clinton to distance herself from it in 2016.
President Trump finally stepped out of the alliance. The 12 countries continued together as the Trans-Pacific Pact Agreement (TPPA). President Biden made no effort to revive the treaty. That is and remains unwise in a world where China has few friends willing to enter into an alliance. Consequently, there are calls from liberal think tanks for renewed U.S. participation.
In the meantime, the US has built on old friendships to establish the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD)with Australia, India and Japan. So did AUKUS, agreements with Australia and the United Kingdom.
China has also tried to establish these kinds of linkages, but they are fragile. The country has no strategic partners or special friends. The clubs China does belong to, for example, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization of Eurasian countries (including Russia and China) have limited influence. The BRICS, originally a club of emerging economies, is now a vehicle for China.
The Chinese danger
American policymakers do differ on the threat posed by China. President Trump’s latest security adviser, Robert O’Brien, advocates “a Trumpian restoration of peace through strength. He considers improving contacts with Beijing and the promise of cooperation advocated by President Biden to be a form of appeasement. In O’Brien’s eyes, China is an unpalatable adversary and Xi is someone who will exploit any (perceived) weakness of America. When President Biden says that America is not out to contain or harm China because “we are all better off if China does well,” O’Brien says that is dangerous drivel. America needs to completely decouple its economy from China’s.
A similar kind of analysis gives Trump’s China expert Matt Pottinger, a well-versed hardliner who speaks fluent Mandarin. Pottinger is no Trump acolyte. He resigned as deputy security adviser after Jan. 6 and recently published The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan. According to him, China is waging a de facto “proxy war” against the West in Ukraine by helping Iran buy oil subject to U.S. sanctions. In Pottinger’s view, the U.S. has no option but to seek structural change in China, summarized as “regime change” with the goal of a more open and liberal China.
On the other end of the spectrum, Biden’s security adviser Jake Sullivan stated in January 2024 that we must have “realistic assumptions” about the extent to which the U.S. can shape the Chinese political system. In other words, “regime change” is a dangerous daydream. Biden’s policy focuses on long-term U.S. goals: preventing one country from acting hegemonically in the Indo-Pacific, preserving U.S. economic and technological leadership and supporting regional democracies.
Despite the differences in stated objectives, in practice actual policy steps appear to be much alike.To what extent America’s loss of standing, partly because of Trump, partly because of little decisive action by Biden, favors China is difficult to discern. It is not a simple zero sum. Although China has done absolutely nothing to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, helping the Russians in the latter case, it does benefit from America’s declining stature. The time-honored cold war game in which secondary countries try to tie up one of the superpowers is in full swing. The Chinese presence in Africa and the Middle East is undeniable, but certainly not stable.
China’s optics
After the war in Iraq and the 2008 economic crisis, China was brimming with self-confidence; the Western political and economic system appeared vulnerable. When Xi came to power in 2012, he was determined to exploit the Chinese advantage). As Xi put it, “The world is undergoing great changes, greater than we have seen in a century.”
President Trump’s distancing of old allies, his bungling during the pandemic and violation of democratic norms was seen as evidence that “the East is rising and the West is going down.” Trump was seen not so much as nail-biting as unpredictable and focused on transactions. When President Biden took office, Beijing was convinced of the decline of the United States. However, after the blizzard of its own corona policy and economic woes, whether or not cloaked behind misleading statistics and authoritarian suppression of free information gathering, China is a little less “up in arms.
In recent years, China has changed its policies, recognizing that its super aggressive foreign policy does more harm than good. The “Wolf Warrior Diplomacy” has been put on hold and Xi’s statements have become more moderate. In September 2023, he told a group of visiting senators “We have a thousand reasons to improve relations between China and America, but no reason to ruin them.”
Unrest in the United States, whether due to Donald Trump’s win or his refusal to acknowledge defeat, will play directly into China’s hands. In that sense, how the U.S. election unfolds does matter. That is not to say they like that turmoil. China does not like uncertainty and unrest. But it reinforces the perception the Chinese summit has anyway: America is no longer the nation it once was. From Trump they can expect more chaos, from Harris more cooperation. When you are as confident as this China, it is easy to guess who is preferred.
