Whoever wins the US presidency, Washington’s relationship with Beijing will remain turbulent

The relationship between the US and China, the world’s only superpower and the country striving to supplant it, will be the most dominant issue in the geopolitics of the future with repercussions around the world.

From a hugely expanded economy to a string of military bases abroad; the spread of hegemony through infrastructure plans like the “belt and road programme”, to the takeover of key positions in global institutions, Beijing has made enormous international strides. And this has happened at a time when Donald Trump has repeatedly disavowed multilateralism, been proudly insular, and alienated allies in the west and beyond.

The impact of coronavirus, the existential threat facing the world today, has, at one level, been very good for Beijing. The Chinese economy is bouncing back stronger than those of other major countries. And Xi Jinping’s regime has sought to use its grip on the supply chain of medical and emergency equipment to seek international leadership.  

But, at the same time, evidence of subterfuge in hiding the spread of the disease, with such devastating consequences, has led to growing distrust of China in a large swathe of countries around the world.  

There is also critical focus on industrial scale repression by the Chinese government of the Muslim Uighur community and the brutal takeover of Hong Kong. There is alarm too over its use of armed forces in border clashes with India and sabre-rattling aimed at Taiwan.

A poll this month by the Pew Research Centre in 14 democratic countries – including South Korea, Canada, the US and nations in western Europe – showed a significant rise in unfavourable views of China, with close to three-quarters of those taking part in America saying they now had a negative attitude towards the country.

Would the US, post-election, lead a coalition of allies in confronting China? Would Donald Trump or Joe Biden be the commander-in-chief to take that role after next month’s presidential election?  Which of the two candidates would be more combative or more conciliatory towards Beijing?

There has been a prevalent view that there was a large degree of bipartisanship in American politics over the challenge posed by China. Senior politicians had been promoted this for a while. An example was Lindsey Graham warning the UK and other European states at the Munich Security  Conference this year not to let the Chinese company Huawei into their telecommunications network.

“Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump are not going to have many dinners together, but if you ask them about the British purchase of Huawei they will give you the same answer. We are very firm in our commitment – Republicans and Democrats – that if you go down the Huawei road you are going to burn a lot of bridges”, said the Trump supporting Republican senator.

And indeed Pelosi, the Democrat speaker of the House of Representatives, told the conference that letting Huawei into the British and European networks would be choosing “autocracy over democracy”. Speaking of the company’s links to China’s communist party, she continued: “this is the most insidious form of aggression, to have that line of communication, 5G, dominated by a government that does not share our values.”

But during the election campaign Trump has sought to portray himself as the President who would be tough on China while claiming that Joe Biden would fail to stand up for the US.  At the last debate between the candidates the President repeatedly claimed that Biden was taking money from China through his son Hunter’s business dealings.

This was swiftly proved to be untrue, and followed by the revelation that the Trump himself had secretly maintained a business account in China. In fact, according to tax records obtained by the New York Times, Trump had paid more taxes to China through his business ventures between 2013 and 15 than he did in the US between 2016 and 17.

Trump has also claimed that he had taken “a really, really strong”  stance against China on coronavirus “ from the start”. But this, too, is open to dispute.

Senior US officials were being briefed last January about the danger of the disease spreading from China, along with signs that the government there was trying to suppress information about its origins. The vice-chair of the US Joint Chiefs of staff, John Hyten, was among those to confirm that he saw reports early that month.Trump  was told about the coronavirus threat, according to a number of accounts, on or around 3rd January. But he was fulsome in his praise of China and  Xi Jinping no fewer than 15 times,  right until the end of February.

On 24 January he tweeted: “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American people, I want to thank President Xi!” 

On 10 February he was telling Fox News “I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control.. You know in April, supposedly, it dies with the hotter weather. And that’s a beautiful date to look forward to. But China, I can tell you, is working very hard.” On 29 February, at a press conference: “China seems to be making tremendous progress. Their numbers are way down... I think our relationship with China is very good. We just did a big trade deal... They’ve been talking to our people, we’ve been talking to their people, having to do with the virus.”

A television advert for the Biden campaign subsequently  featured a compilation of Trump’s praise of  Xi and his regime in an effort to portray Trump as someone who cannot be trusted to protect America’s interests from China if he were to return as President.

There have also been claims that Trump actively sought Chinese help for his re-election campaign. John Bolton, who served as National Security Advisor before being one of the latest to leave the administration, described the alleged plea to Xi in his book, ‘The Room Where It Happened.’

Bolton wrote; “Trump, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election alluding to China’s economic capability with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome.” The account has been disputed by the White House.

Farmers, as we know, make a key voting bloc in the US and largely supported Trump in the 2016 election, with around 75 per cent of them backing hm.  And while Beijing had imposed trade sanctions on countries which had criticised it over Covid-19, such as banning a range of Australian imports, they have continued to buy American farming products, albeit at a reduced scale. 

The Trump administration has compensated the farmers and ranchers for the shortfall of Chinese purchase with subsidies of $14.3 billion in 2019 and another $30 billion for pandemic-related losses.

Trump’s threats to pull US troops out of South Korea and Japan unless they paid up more for their presence led to uncertainty among the two key US partners and also emboldened China. But the various secretaries of state and defence secretaries ,including those currently in the posts, Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper, have tried hard to repair the damage and rebuild conference,

American diplomats and military commanders have also continued their efforts, carrying on from the Bush and Obama administrations, to get India to become a member of an alliance against Beijing, to the extent of the military changing the name of the Pacific Command to the Indo-Pacific Command. But this has been a difficult process with the marked  reluctance by Narendra Modi’s government to be seen to be taking a hardline a position on China even with the current low state of fraught relations.

However, the recent talks of the ‘Quadrilateral’ group – US, Japan, Australia and India – in Tokyo were more robust about Beijing on a range of issues from freedom of navigation in the South China Seas, where Beijing has unilaterally claimed 80 per cent of the water, to counter Chinese intelligence activities including alleged cyber attacks.

The US Navy recently sailed two aircraft carrier fleets through the disputed waters, and other nations are likely to follow, including Britain when the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth II makes a journey east next year.

The Trump administration has approved the sale of $1.8 billion to Taiwan, including 135 precision guided Cruise missiles. This fits in with the President’s view of foreign and defence policy being transactional, and counters threats from Chinese military commanders or reuniting the island to the mainland by force.

There is a view among the governments of some east Asian states that the Obama administration, with Biden as vice president, was too slow in keeping track of Chinese expansion,  allowing developments like the ‘string of pearls’ bases in the Pacific and Indian Ocean.  It was also felt to be insufficiently supportive when neighbouring countries were in dispute with Beijing in the disputed waters.

Obama did signal, however, a concerted Pacific Rim tilt, on diplomacy, defence and trade five years ago : but the US then got dragged back into the Middle East with the rise of Isis and then Russian intervention in the Syrian war.

There is also the perception among officials in East Asian states that the Democrat presidency was too interested in trade with China to question Beijing’s actions.  Susan Rice, Obama’s National Security Advisor, who helped organise one of his visits to China, was a vocal  advocate of a partnership between the two countries.

Rice is being tipped to be a senior member of a Biden administration. Her supporters point out that she was simply stating the need for the China and the US to avert crisis and maintain stability.

In any event, relations between Rice and Chinese officials have not remained totally amicable. Last year she accused accused Lijian Zhao, an official ‘ Wolf Warrior’ school of aggressive Chinese diplomacy,  as “a racist disgrace” and “shockingly ignorant”. Zhao, in defending his government’s treatment of the Uighurs, appeared to compare the security situation Xinjiang to supposed black and Latino violence in the US, saying in a tweet if “you’re in Washington DC you know the white never go... because it's an area for the black & Latin."

The issue of the Chinese government and human rights would be something the next US administration will need to address. According to John Bolton, in the same meeting that he had asked election help, Trump told Xi  “go ahead building camps” for the Uighurs, describing the mass internment campaign as “exactly the right thing to do” (the White House denies this).

Biden has been critical of Beijing’s actions on human rights,  maintaining that  he would build “a united front of US allies and partners to confront China’s abusive behaviour and human rights violations”. He has named Xi as “one of the thugs” Trump has cosied up to.

But the Democrat challenger has also stated that he would “seek to cooperate on issues where our interests converge, such as climate change, non-proliferation and global health security".

Biden has said that, under his presidency, the US will rejoin the World Health Organisation (WHO) which Trump left after accusing, with some justice,  it and, in particular, its Ethiopian director general Tedros Ghebreyesus, of behaving slavishly towards Xi and his regime over coronavirus. A Democrat presidency will restore the funding that Trump withdraw and will propose a coalition to search for a Covid-19 vaccine and new treatments, assured Biden.

Trump has abandoned the Paris climate agreement. Biden has pledged to rejoin it immediately, and also commit the US to reaching international global warming targets. Any tangible success on the agreement will necessitate working with China, the world’s second largest economy.

Then there is the trade war between US and China, one which Trump had vowed to win. But he has little to show for the bruising battles which followed. The President  had also promised to cut the overall trade deficit, but last August it widened to $67 billion, the highest monthly tally in 14 years. The deficit with China had a monthly fall of seven per cent, but it was still about $26 billion.

The Democrats say they will end the trade war, but will not do so making undue concessions to Beijing. Whoever wins, the process of decoupling swathes of US industry from China, already under way, is certain to accelerate.

The relationship between US and China,  will undergo a fundamental reset changes in many fronts after the US election and all the indications are that it will be a turbulent and fractious process.