An Election Countdown for the US-China Relationship

As the United States hurtles into election season, relations between Washington and Beijing remain at their lowest of lows in decades. This summer marked moments of unprecedented U.S. action against China, including the levying of sanctions against senior Chinese officials over atrocities against religious minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), the shutdown of the Chinese consulate in Houston, and the further crystallization of the end of Hong Kong’s special status in the wake of the passage of new national security legislation. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, acknowledging the state of the relationship in a candid speech in July, described the current moment as representing the “most severe challenge” to the bilateral relationship since diplomatic normalization in 1979. But is this course here to stay?

As this edition of The Diplomat Magazine goes to print, elections in the United States are a little more than two months away. Democratic nominee Joe Biden, the former vice president, maintains a commanding lead in national-level polling and critical swing states appear to be thoroughly competitive for President Donald Trump’s opponent. While a second Trump term is still a possibility, the likelier outcome based on pre-election fundamentals right now appears to be a change in administration. If Biden inherits the Oval Office, the U.S.-China relationship will remain at the top of the agenda in U.S. foreign policy. But just how much of a change can be expected?

Since 2017, American mainstream views of China have shifted away from a preference for engagement at all costs with Beijing. This is true on both sides of the political aisle, with both Democrats and Republicans preferring policies that are more hardline than what they might have advocated just a few years ago. This much appears to be uncontroversial. Across Democratic-aligned foreign policy elites, concerns about China’s apparent attempts to make the world safer for authoritarianism loom large, as do anxieties about the opportunities presented to Beijing by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The Chinese view of the current predicament in bilateral ties does not appear to fully take stock of the bipartisan coalescence of a more hardline posture. Wang, in separate remarks in August, attributed recent steps, like the closing of the Chinese consulate in Houston, to “anti-China forces in the United States,” implying that a small coterie of hawkish Trump administration advisers and officials had engineered the current state of bilateral ties. This misses the mark. While Trump administration officials have adopted an unusually harsh array of policies toward Beijing on nearly all issues, there’s little reason to believe that the relationship might return to a happier equilibrium – in Beijing’s view, at least – should a change in administration take place.

At the same time, much of what the Trump administration is implementing in what may be its final months in office in 2020 appears to be designed to reduce the room for maneuver available to a potential Biden presidency on the China question. For instance, while Biden has been explicit that he will seek the reversal of some policies, including the Trump-era tariffs imposed on China and other countries, it is unlikely that he would oversee the lifting of sanctions against XUAR officials and entities, or restore special status to Hong Kong. Doing so would appear inherently conciliatory, of course, but this also oversimplifies why the next administration is likely to stay the course on many issues.

Biden – and those advising him – have come to reassess China’s foreign policy under Xi Jinping. Where a Biden administration may differ from Trump, however, is in retaining something of a cooperative agenda in the relationship where U.S. interests may be served. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Biden indicated that he would seek to cooperatively approach North Korea with China, for instance. Most explicitly, he suggested that the United States would work to limit China’s systemic influence internationally, “even as we seek to cooperate with Beijing on issues where our interests converge, such as climate change, nonproliferation, and global health security.” To the Trump administration, this approach is old wine in a new bottle. The Obama administration, too, they say, suggested that cooperation with China was necessary in some areas while attempting to restrain Beijing elsewhere.

Fundamentally, where the Trump administration has chosen to fire on all cylinders when it comes to competition with China, the Biden administration may find itself struggling between liberal economic and political values. For instance, even if tariffs are rolled back and American industry is given relief from the anxieties of the trade war of the past couple years, can a Democratic administration that professes human rights continue to do business as if it’s 2016 knowing all that has happened and is happening in XUAR, Hong Kong, and elsewhere in China? A clear answer has yet to emerge, but this is likely to remain the fundamental conflict that Biden’s China policy will have to wrangle with.

It’s unclear if this is also the Chinese leadership’s assessment of what a Biden administration might represent. But after months of trading barbs and empowering its so-called “Wolf Warrior” diplomats, China has attempted to calm the waters a bit. Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador to the United States, penned an op-ed in August, recalling the halcyon days in the bilateral relationship and calling on the two sides to “reset” the relationship. The ambassador perhaps did not intend for the comparison, but one can’t help but recall the disastrous U.S.-Russia “reset” attempted by the Obama administration, which began to fall apart, first after the U.S. and NATO intervention in Libya in 2011 and then completely with Moscow’s February 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

A U.S.-China “reset,” unfortunately, is not in the cards. Beijing’s assessment – at least publicly – appears rosier. Wang and other Chinese officials often describe the U.S.-China relationship in teleological terms and as predetermined: “The trend toward China-U.S. cooperation is unstoppable,” as one of Wang’s deputies put it in July. There is an unstoppable trend, but, sadly, it is heading the other way: toward greater confrontation and the ossification of competitive dynamics. Whatever happens in November’s election, the turbulence in U.S.-China relations is here to stay.