Trade and the self-ruled island of Taiwan are among the issues predicted to bring friction to the relationship between Chinese leadership and the administration of president-elect Donald Trump.
The Associated Press
Chinese President Xi Jinping joined the cavalcade of world leaders congratulating Donald Trump on his imminent return to the White House, noting Thursday that “history tells us that China and the United States benefit from co-operation and lose from confrontation.”
It was a preview of a potential charm offensive capitalizing on Mr. Trump’s fondness for interpersonal relationships and grand deal-making to blunt his threats of 100-per-cent tariffs on Chinese goods – while taking advantage of the geopolitical chaos many expect him to sow to expand China’s influence across Asia and the wider world.
Unlike Beijing’s response after Mr. Trump’s surprise 2016 victory, “China’s preparation this time is much more comprehensive,” said Wu Xinbo, director of the Centre for American Studies at Shanghai’s Fudan University. He predicted Beijing will seek to rebuild ties and establish communication with Mr. Trump ahead of his inauguration in January, while at the same time preparing for potential “struggle and competition.”
China tried something similar in Mr. Trump’s first term, rolling out the red carpet to a man who had accused the world’s second-biggest economy of “raping” the U.S. on trade but was soon describing Mr. Xi as a friend and praising him as “very talented.”
In November, 2017, Mr. Trump dined with Mr. Xi in the Forbidden City, the first foreign leader to do so since the founding of modern China. After the visit, Chinese state media lauded Mr. Trump’s pragmatism, noting he hadn’t “used the issue of human rights to make trouble for China so far,” so the Sino-U.S. relationship could “focus on substantive matters.”
The honeymoon didn’t last. In 2018, the Trump administration launched its long-threatened trade war, with both sides hitting the other with tit-for-tat tariffs – and the U.S. bearing most of the damage. Rapid personnel changes in Washington, particularly the replacement of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a former CEO of ExxonMobil, with arch anti-communist Mike Pompeo, also saw the U.S. adopt a more hawkish approach on a host of issues, from Hong Kong to Taiwan and the South China Sea. What goodwill remained was buried by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which Mr. Trump blamed on China, calling it the “Chinese virus.”
U.S.-China relations have not improved under President Joe Biden, despite several much-vaunted reset moments, but there are signs that, for all his rhetoric about tariffs, Mr. Trump may be amenable to striking some kind of deal with Beijing once again.
On multiple occasions on the campaign trail, he praised Mr. Xi, hailing their “very strong relationship” and calling him a “brilliant man” who “controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.”
The tenor of the relationship will be shaped in part by Congress and Mr. Trump’s cabinet. Mr. Pompeo is once again being mooted for a senior role, as are fellow China hawks Marco Rubio and Robert Lighthizer. But most analysts expect the new president to be far less restrained by his subordinates than he was during his first term, when figures such as Mr. Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis saw themselves as responsible for reining him in.
Other figures in Mr. Trump’s orbit, particularly billionaire Elon Musk, who has strong ties to China, could also nudge the president-elect to become more sympathetic to Beijing.
China is also better prepared with its own tariff and sanctions regime to hit back at the U.S. if it comes to that.
Should China be successful in staving off the worst of Mr. Trump’s trade threats, there are several potential upsides for Beijing that come with his return to the White House.
Under Mr. Biden, Washington has ramped up engagement across Asia, building ties with allies in the region to counter Chinese influence and deter any potential future action by China against Taiwan. Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly complained about countries not paying enough for their own defence and relying too much on the U.S. as a deterrent, could undermine this, reducing America’s presence in the region and forcing countries to once again balance relations with Beijing.
In an editorial Wednesday, South Korea’s Hankyoreh newspaper said Seoul needs to prepare because “Trump’s victory raises the likelihood that American foreign policy will pivot away from ‘values-based diplomacy,’ or collaborating with allied countries holding similar values in a struggle with China and Russia, and toward a unilateral pursuit of the exclusive interests of the U.S.”
The biggest uncertainty – and potentially biggest advantage to Beijing – of Mr. Trump’s second term, at least when it comes to China, is the issue of Taiwan. While many Republicans are hawkish defenders of the self-ruled democracy, and Mr. Trump told The Wall Street Journal that Mr. Xi would not dare invade it, the president-elect has also questioned U.S. commitment to Taiwan, accusing Taiwanese companies of “taking 100-per-cent of our chip business” and noting that “Taiwan is 9,500 miles away” from the U.S. but only “68 miles away from China.”
“Trump does not favour multilateralism in the Indo-Pacific,” said Lev Nachman, a political science professor at National Taiwan University. “Japan and South Korea are in the middle of domestic political uncertainty, which means China will have an easy time establishing its position while the U.S., Japan and South Korean trilateral relationship is in flux. This is bad for Taiwan.”
Shi Yinhong, a professor of international studies at Renmin University in Beijing, was skeptical about how much Mr. Trump might push U.S. allies into China’s orbit, however.
“Although Trump’s treachery, extortion, cruelty and unpredictability will alienate core U.S. allies [including Canada] to some extent, the opposition between them and China is too serious, so relations between them and China are unlikely to see significant and lasting improvement,” Prof. Shi said.
He saw few upsides for China in a second Trump term, warning that the next four years could see relations deteriorate “to their worst state barring a large-scale military conflict.”
With files from Alexandra Li in Beijing.