China unlikely to find US President-elect Biden a soft touch
09 November, 2020
In his unsuccessful campaign for re-election, President Donald Trump repeatedly warned a victory for Joe Biden would be a win for China and that Beijing would "own America".
Even though rhetoric, there is little to advise Beijing will see Biden a soft alternative to Trump, who considerably shifted the US narrative to confront the world’s second-largest economy in his final year in power.
Even before Trump took office, the last Democratic administration of President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden had substantially hardened its attitude towards China.
After initial efforts to engage Beijing, Trump's administration took this further, pushing back forcefully against China's efforts to spread its influence globally, earning some grudging praise from Biden advisers despite a bitterly fought election campaign.
Chinese state media struck an optimistic tone on Monday (Nov 9) in editorials reacting to Biden's election win, saying relations could be restored to a state of greater predictability and may start with trade.
While acknowledging america was unlikely to help ease pressure on China on issues such as for example Xinjiang and Hong Kong, state-backed newspaper Global Times said Beijing should work to talk to the Biden team as thoroughly as it can.
TOUGH METHOD OF CONTINUE
Biden has not organized an in depth China strategy, but all indications are he'll continue the tough method of Beijing.
Diplomats, analysts and former officials who advised the Biden campaign do though expect a far more measured tone after Trump’s hip-fired threats, and an focus on “strategic competition” rather than outright confrontation.
That said, Biden has sometimes gone even further than the outgoing president in attacking China.
He has described Chinese President Xi Jinping as a "thug" and vowed to lead a global campaign to "pressure, isolate and punish China". His campaign in addition has labelled China’s actions against Muslims in Xinjiang "genocide" - a step beyond current policy, with significant implications if that designation is formalised.
"The United States needs to get tough with China," Biden said within an article published in March as the COVID-19 pandemic, which commenced in the Chinese city of Wuhan, took hold.
"The simplest way to meet up that challenge is to build a united front of US allies and partners to confront China's abusive behaviors and human rights violations."
In the same sentence, Biden also wrote of seeking "to cooperate with Beijing on issues where our interests converge, such as for example climate change, non-proliferation and global health security".
Reconciling those aims could be the key challenge, with the potential to touch off the sort of disputes between hard-liners and pragmatists observed in the Trump administration.
"There are going to be big debates," said a former senior National government official who worked closely with Biden during the past.
"You should have folks in the Biden team who'll say China represents a systemic threat to the United States and we have to treat them as such, and you will have pragmatists saying: 'We're in the center of a pandemic, climate change is accelerating, we need to use them.'"
With regards to trade, Biden sometimes appears as unlikely to roll back his predecessor's tariffs on goods from China and elsewhere anytime soon.
"I am told that in the event that you close your eyes, you will possibly not be able to tell the difference" between your Biden and Trump trade agendas, said Nasim Fussell, former Republican trade counsel at the united states Senate Finance Committee.
"Biden's not likely to stop wasting time to unravel a few of these tariffs."
His top monetary priority is to revive an economy slammed by the coronavirus pandemic, so trade agreements will probably take a back seat to stimulus efforts and infrastructure development.
"MORE PREDICTABLE AND STRATEGIC"
Whereas the outgoing administration's tendency has often appeared to be to launch unilateral attacks on Beijing then to browbeat allies and partners into supporting them, Biden will aim to engage allies first and reassert US leadership via international institutions Trump disdained.
Top Biden advisers told Reuters he'd immediately seek advice from with key allies before making a decision on the continuing future of tariffs on China, seeking “collective leverage” to strengthen his hand.
"A Biden administration’s China policy could be more predictable and strategic," said Wendy Cutler, a former US diplomat and trade negotiator.
"The times of advisers scrambling to implement what they learn through presidential tweets will be during the past. The times of throwing one sanction after another at the wall and seeing what sticks without a strategic framework will be over as well."
While analysts say a lot of the detail of future China policy will rely upon who Biden names to key positions, the concentrate on rebuilding bruised alliances is a fundamental tenet.
Contenders for top positions and Biden himself stress that to work, the approach should be underpinned by domestic investment to make sure a US competitive edge over China in key technologies such as for example quantum computing, artificial intelligence and 5G.
Michele Flournoy, a hawkish contender for defense secretary, has warned that the monetary damage due to the pandemic mean future defence budgets will be flattened or worse, while stressing the necessity for all of us forces to be able and willing to complete on any deterrent threat.
"If the US military had the ability to credibly threaten to sink all of China’s military vessels, submarines, and merchant ships in the South China Sea within 72 hours, Chinese leaders might think twice before, say, launching a blockade or invasion of Taiwan," she wrote in the June edition of Foreign Affairs.
Kurt Campbell, the top US diplomat for East Asia in the first Obama administration, told London's Policy Exchange think tank on Oct 28 Washington faced "a period of deep strategic competition" with China and it had been vital to have a united approach in the home to dispel the idea that America was in a "hurtling decline".
"We have to convince other countries we've our own house in order, which we do not at this time," he said. "Some extent of bipartisanship as we consider China and Asia will likely be essential ... Without it, we will, in all probability, fail."
Source: www.channelnewsasia.com