Biden’s China Policy: Détente, Strategic Competition and Trade

Beijing is very concerned about the U.S. election, as the outcome of the election will have profound impacts on U.S.-China relations and China’s future developments. However, some believe that no matter who is elected, the United States’ trend of containment and confrontation with China will not change. With Joe Biden’s victory certain, U.S.-China relations will go through a period of détente following Donald Trump’s departure. The next two years will be critical for Xi Jinping in his quest to reach the pinnacle of power by the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Congress, and he must handle U.S.-China relations with care. Biden’s victory is a reset button, and Beijing must seize this opportunity.

Biden has some personal ties to Xi. Over a period of a year and a half starting in 2011, Xi, then already the CCP’s heir apparent, met with then-Vice President Biden no fewer than eight times. Biden has also said, “I’ve spent more time with Xi Jinping … than any world leader has.” However, Biden will not return to Barack Obama’s “engagement policy” with China once he becomes president: He will not be Obama 2.0. In fact, already in the second half of Obama’s second term, engagement with China had proven ineffective, and China had become a long-term strategic threat to the United States.

This is the critical element of the Thucydides Trap: the inevitable tension between a rising power and an already-existing one. This tension will not change much because of the leaders’ personal relationships or the new U.S. administration’s honeymoon period with Beijing. The Biden administration will respond to China’s rise more effectively, and as strategic competition intensifies, the chances of a clash between China and the U.S. in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait will not decline.

After Biden is elected, the first target for observation is whether the current Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between the U.S., Japan, India and Australia—what has been called the “Asian NATO”—will take shape as scheduled. Writing on foreign policy in Foreign Affairs magazine earlier this year, Biden argued that the most effective way to meet the China challenge is to build a united front of U.S. allies and partners. Biden would restore the U.S. commitment to NATO; that is, he would likely continue the formation of “Asian NATO” and even continue Trump’s national security strategy of treating China and Russia as strategic competitors.

However, in addition to confrontation, Biden’s rise to power will also bring cooperation. Looking at the recent economic and trade trends between China and the U.S., China has been stepping up imports from the U.S. since July, and by the end of October, purchases from the U.S. had already amounted to $23 billion, or 71% of the pledged amount, with U.S. cattle and pig products reaching record highs. In doing so, it is not so much that China is campaigning for Trump as it is Beijing shifting to a peaceful, low-key approach to prevent the U.S.-China relationship from deteriorating out of control. The U.S. secretary of agriculture has also called the first phase of the U.S.-China trade agreement a “huge success” for the U.S. economy.

This shows that in the end there is, in fact, a limit to the economic and trade confrontation between the U.S. and China. More and more people are beginning to reconsider whether Trump’s tariff war and decoupling war are really good for the U.S. economy. China’s gross domestic policy grew by 4.9% in the third quarter of this year and may grow by 5% in the fourth quarter. In contrast, the U.S. economy is still in a slump, and it appears that in order to promote the recovery of the U.S. economy, economic cooperation between the two nations must be quickly accelerated.

Biden does not approve of Trump’s economic clash with China, saying that Trump has been using the wrong approach in his trade war. This has been interpreted as a possible revisiting of the tariffs on China. His foreign policy adviser, Tony Blinken, has said that decoupling from China is not an effective solution, and the Democratic Party platform has also argued against a one-sided tariff war that would only hurt American workers. Biden wishes to keep long-term considerations in mind and focus on a win-win system of cooperation in the new international environment. For this, cooperation with China on global issues is essential. In particular, there is a lot of room for cooperation between the two countries on climate change and prevention of pandemics.

In this election, many people, from Taiwan and Hong Kong to the U.S, rooted for Trump’s reelection, mainly because of his tough attitude toward Beijing, on many occasions making things difficult for the CCP. This mentality is not so much a sign of support for Trump as it is a sign of strong dissatisfaction with the CCP officials’ disregard for freedom and human rights, and thus these people are comforted by Trump’s actions checking the CCP’s power. This expectation will be projected on Biden when he takes office. In fact, the Democrats place more emphasis on democracy and human rights than the Republicans, and Biden once described Xi as a man who “doesn’t have a democratic bone in his body.” For Beijing, a U.S. administration that has a firm stance on democracy and human rights is much trickier to handle than a military or trade war.