Can the US and China Walk Back From the Brink?

As the U.S. 2020 presidential election nears, much attention has focused on what to expect for the U.S.-China relationship after November 3. The race between sitting President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden is one of stark contrasts on most issues, but the candidates’ positions on China share distinct commonalities. Both are advocating for tougher responses on trade, technology, maritime security, and human rights, though the two candidates diverge on the tactics. Still, no matter who occupies the White House, the test for leaders in both Beijing and Washington will be, despite deepening acrimony, whether they can walk the world’s two leading economies back from entrenched bellicosity that raises the potential for conflict.

Even before the global spread of the coronavirus, U.S.-China relations were shaky at best, with U.S. policy toward China during the Trump administration apparently set on confrontation. Trump officials, predominantly concerned with the economic dimension of bilateral ties, launched a trade war, imposing tariffs on billions of dollars worth of goods, a move that analysts say has cost the United States 300,000 jobs. The economy and trade have not been the only irritants; the outbreak of COVID-19 exacerbated underlying tensions, as did China’s crackdown on Hong Kong, oppression against Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, and threatening behavior toward Taiwan. The U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory for Hong Kong, later extended to all of China, warning of China’s use of “arbitrary detentions and exit bans.”

The frictions have taken a real-world toll. In July, the United States ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston; China responded by shutting down the U.S. consulate in Chengdu. Separately, the current U.S. ambassador to China, Terry Branstad, is set to step down in October.

As former Obama official and Georgetown professor Evan Medeiros told NPR in July, “It looks like we're increasingly on a trajectory to a long-term strategic competition.”

Trump and his officials are not alone in voicing their calls to “get tough” on China. Over the past several years, a rare bipartisan consensus has emerged on recalibrating U.S. policy on China to better address the competitive dynamics between the two countries. This is reflected not only in executive moves imposing tariffs and sanctions on Chinese goods and entities, but also a volume of legislative initiatives dedicated to recalibrate the U.S.-China relationship.

Changing attitudes toward China also reverberate in the American public. A summer 2020 Pew Research Center poll found that 73 percent of Americans held an unfavorable view of China, while just 22 percent had a favorable one. These trendlines have shifted significantly over the past decade: in 2010, 49 percent of Americans viewed China favorably, compared to 36 percent unfavorably.

The “tough on China” trend is unlikely to dissipate anytime soon. Analysts and observers, such as John Pomfret, a former Washington Post bureau chief in Beijing and author of “The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present,” have argued that  “the Trump administration should be credited for waking the United States up to the challenge China represents” and for “thinking outside the box.”

Although the Trump administration’s actions do not always elicit their desired effect or garner widespread support, those on the other side of the aisle in U.S. politics find little fault with the assessment that a more ambitious China requires a stronger U.S. response. For example, Kurt Campbell, the top Asia official in the Obama State Department, now a senior adviser to the Biden campaign, told the Wall Street Journal that “there is a broad recognition in the Democratic Party that Trump was largely accurate in diagnosing China’s predatory practices.”

Still, the main markers of Trump’s diplomatic style have been his commitment to tackling issues in a transactional manner and largely jettisoning multilateralism. For example, Trump has condemned China’s entry into the World Trade Organization nearly two decades ago while waging the United States’ trade war outside the WTO framework. While designed to reduce vulnerabilities due to interdependence and stem Chinese access to U.S. markets and technology, such trade measures also have some knock-on, negative effects for American partners. Hawks within the Trump administration have also embraced framing the bilateral relationship as a “new Cold War,” harking back to the ideological rivalry between Washington and Moscow. Such emphasis on ideology “makes the rivalry an existential cage match, heightening its intensity and risks even further,” caution Elbridge Colby and Robert A. Kaplan.

While existing tariffs and sanctioned Chinese entities will be reevaluated in a Biden presidency, some have suggested that U.S. officials may resort to further punishments to rekindle China’s willingness to negotiate across a wide array of policy areas.

Still, tactics are where Biden may chart a different path, favoring cooperation with allies and coalition building. Earlier this year, Biden delineated the contours of his China policy, articulating that “the most effective way to meet that challenge is to build a united front of U.S. allies and partners to confront China’s abusive behaviors and human rights violations, even as we seek to cooperate with Beijing on issues where our interests converge.” This tack gives far greater value to coordinating positions on China with others, notably in Europe as well as Japan, South Korea, and other Asian partner countries.

Beyond a commitment to revitalizing coalitions vis-a-vis China, the next administration will need to reckon with a polarized American populace, engaged in a debate over the role the United States should play globally and the preferred vehicles for its leadership. “Policymakers seeking a more effective strategy for both competing and cooperating with China should recognize the limits of China’s international appeal – as well as the dangers of the United States’ own nationalist fervor,” wrote Jessica Chen Weiss in Foreign Affairs, highlighting the shared threat of unfettered nationalism in each country.

No matter the U.S. election’s results, Beijing will be facing a hardened counterpart in Washington that is less amenable to compromise under the promise of absolute gains. A trade volume of $559 billion in goods in 2019, while sizable, does little to attenuate the strain seeping from economics to technology access, freedom of navigation operations in disputed Asia waters, human rights, and media access.

Although a Biden victory may usher in a more inclusive approach to the complexities of the U.S.-China relationship, it will likely require extensive legwork to reverse the overt hostility that has swiftly become the norm.

In the near to medium term, failure to strike a balance between competition and cooperation will likely not only be detrimental to the United States and China, but to its partners and the international community alike, jeopardizing coordination on challenges that know no borders, including climate change and nuclear developments in North Korea and Iran. Moreover, these pressing transnational issues should not be abandoned or leveraged for the sake of edging out the other in competition.

Two-way and multilateral cooperation is not impossible; rather leaders in both countries must actively identify the domains in which they are willing to work together. As the Brookings Institution’s Rush Doshi told the South China Morning Post, “that is a choice that leaders of both countries can make. And we’ve seen great powers make that choice before, and certainly it’s possible they can make it again.”

“They’re going to have to make it again,” he added, “because the tension is unlikely to just automatically dissipate on its own.”