This content was first published by Pacific Forum. It is republished with authority.
” Are we enemies, or companions”? President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping had a conversation next November at the Filoli Estate, a magnificent country house and garden set in Woodside, California, at which time President Xi Jinping and President Xi Jinping spoke. ” That”, Xi explained, “is the number one question for us”.
In response to the question five months later in his telephone conversation with Biden, Xi claimed that the two sides needed to “get the issue of corporate perception” right second, just like the first button on a shirt that needs to be fixed.
Get it a Harris management or a subsequent Trump administration, the second option is not likely to be worn as per Xi’s desire. The US-China relations period has come to a ceremonious close. Strategic competitors, including apparently of an extraordinary variant, is here to stay.
The key question is whether the two parties are capable of grimly stabilizing ties by placing guardrails on the relationship as the relationship’s negative tendencies develop, or whether serious competition will turn into direct strategic rivalry with the possibility of the base completely disappearing.
A Harris president’s or a second Trump president’s approach toward China probably would have some popular elements. These include
- maintaining America’s technology advantage over China,
- preventing China’s business and industrial plan from stifling world markets and lowering US competitiveness,
- promoting US principles and reversing Foreign government and influencing operations models,
- maintaining an intellect benefit over Beijing, and, all,
- deterring China from the use of military power geographically. In a fight, China must refrain from maintaining its air and sea supremacy, defend Taiwan as one of the first area chains, and impose its own rule over all other areas relating to warfighting.  ,  ,  ,
The Trump government’s National Security Strategy of December 2017 serves as the theoretical foundation for the popular view to China.
Having declared China a “revisionist energy” that was engaged in “long-term proper competition” with the United States, the administration worked to redesign the region’s hub-and-spokes architecture into a four-cornered network featuring Washington, Tokyo, Canberra, and New Delhi as the “principal hubs” to maintain a positive corporate balance over China.
Tariffs were imposed on$ 370 billion worth of Chinese imports on the geopolitical before, and the US’ technology power program was redesigned following an expansive Internet ( information and communications technology and services ) rule that was initially trained on Huawei’s kneecapping.
The Biden administration’s three-part approach to “invest, align and compete” against China is built on this foundation. Its punitive” small yard, high fence” controls – be they about chips, supercomputing or connected vehicles – derive from the ICTS order. Trump’s Section 301 tariffs have beennot just retained but selectively increased, too, not scaled down.
By introducing landmark legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act ( IRA ), the Biden administration has also increased domestic product capacity in key strategic and high-value-added manufacturing sectors. Additionally, it has creatively employed several industrial policy authorities, such as the Defense Production Act, Buy American Act, and the Bayh-Dole Act.
Given that the Republican leadership had abandoned these industrial policy initiatives, and the climate change-related initiatives might not be carried out in a second Trump administration.
Geopolitically, the Biden administration’s strategy on China centered on crafting a bespoke “latticework” of trilateral and multilateral coalitions ( rather than simply establishing a four-cornered architecture as was the case with Trump ) to build” situations of strength” and dictate the terms of effective competition with China.
Having assembled these coalitions – AUKUS, Quad, ROK-Japan-US trilateral, the Squad, deepened NATO-Indo-Pacific Partner ( IPP ) relationships – to shape the strategic environment around China, the Biden administration has since the November 2022 G20 Summit in Bali sought to cement a “floor” under its working relations with Beijing.
In a Harrisian or second Trump administration, the Biden and Trump administration brushstrokes are anticipated to continue.
None of this pleases China. In its view, the Trump and Biden administration’s strategies were intended to build it out economically, isolate it diplomatically, encircle it militarily and suppress its development technologically.
In Beijing, the networking of alliances, partnerships, and minilateral groupings is more of a catalyst for major power conflicts than a pillar for stability and deterrence, in Beijing’s opinion. And regardless of who wins on November 5, there are little hopes of positive change going forward.
That said, a Harris presidency is handily the “lesser of two evils” insofar as China is concerned.
Disruption, rather than stability, had been the norm on China during the Trump years and likely would be the case again.
China hopes that the next president will consolidate the fragile stability in ties and institutionalize it to make the bilateral relationship more predictable by building on the slow rehabilitation of ties over the past 18 months.
An essential component of China’s top top national interest is a non-disruptive external environment supported by a rough-and-ready coexisting relationship with the United States, which is its re-emergence and the achievement of its national modernization goals by the middle of the 21st . century. Harris is more qualified than Trump to make this point.
Second, as a general principle, China prefers continuity over change in government. With the relevant leader and counterpart senior officials, continuity facilitates more predictable and stable interactions, as well as allowing for the formation of equity.
Given his depth of knowledge of China and his interactions with Xi, Beijing would have preferred that Biden be reelected to office. Harris, nonetheless, represents the next best option. Besides, Harris’s pronouncements on China on the campaign trail have been light on detail. The less said over the public airwaves the better, in Beijing’s view.
Third, as a general principle, in the post-Cold War era, China has tended to prefer Democratic Party presidents over Republican Party presidents. In fact, the Clinton and Obama second terms were extremely fruitful in the bilateral relationship, which is another reason why Beijing would have so much preferred that Biden have stayed in even during this “new normal” era of US-China ties.
Democrats, in Beijing’s view, are more prone to taking a less adversarial approach towards the bilateral relationship and China’s role in the world compared to Republicans. And now that the Republican Party has abandoned its pro-trade stances, the policy axes that China and Republican administrations can rely on to find common ground have fallen dramatically.
Finally, and relatedly, China holds deep reservations not so much about President Trump as much as about a Trump administration. Trump is a known and, up to a point, a manageable quantity, in Beijing’s view. His transactionalism opens him up to opportunistic deals involving US jobs, investments, and exports, and he is not necessarily anti-China in his political outlook.
A second Trump administration, on the other hand, would be filled with freshmen who were unjustifiably hostile to China. Even though the ties would be low, there might be no bottomless if these new Cold Warriors proved to be determined to establish Taiwan as the central hub of the United States ‘ great power rivalry with China. Beijing would prefer that this theory be left unproven.
Over the next four years, the US and China will likely remain tense in a fiercely competitive relationship. The Indo-Pacific region and the world will be greatly affected by whether the two parties are able or willing to incorporate this competitive dynamic into a steadying strategic framework.
Sourabh Gupta , ( sourabhgupta@chinaus-icas .org ) is a senior Indo-Pacific international relations policy specialist with two decades of Washington-based experience in a think tank and political risk research and advisory capacity. At the Institute for China-America Studies, he heads the Trade n ‘ Technology Program.