Daily Times

The downward spiral in US–China relations during the Trump era prompted many to assert that the United States and China were entering a ‘new Cold War’. Actually, this framing was the result of the Trump administration’s confrontational stance on China. Yet it appears that the Biden administration’s approach on China could be pragmatically accommodating. U.S. President Joe Biden on last Wednesday laid out his immediate vision for America’s role in the world, where the challenge to tackle China is front and center, as his administration works to develop a long-term strategy. The 24-page interim national security strategic guidance, which mentions China and its government some 20 times, “lays out the global landscape as the Biden administration sees it, explains the priorities of our foreign policy and specifically how America’s strength to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities of our time,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said hours before the report’s release.

Rivalry between global power, the United States and emerging global power, China has become a paradigm of international relations over the past two years. It shapes both strategic debates and real political, military and economic dynamics. The dimensions of Sino-American competition over power and status include growing threat perceptions and an increasingly important political/ ideological component. From the Chinese perspective, as Hanns Günther Hilpert and Gudrun Wacker show, the United States will never voluntarily cede significant international influence to China.

From America’s point of view, in the post-Cold War Era, chief among the many conundrums is the growing China challenge. As the world’s second largest economy continues to challenge American power on the global stage, Biden inherits a massive trust deficit from Trump, and a U.S.-China relationship that has deteriorated because of some leading factors—the climate change, the US-China trade deal, and geopolitical rift s like the South China Sea and Hong Kong–relating to brewing a new cold war between them in the post-pandemic phase.

President Biden has made clear his commitment to putting the United States on a path to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Factually, China’s record on the clean energy transition is far better than the US

America regards China as a revisionist power whose long-term aim is global supremacy. This, as the contribution by Marco Overhaus, Peter Rudolf and Laura von Daniels demonstrates, is a matter of broad consensus in the United States, across both main parties and throughout business, politics and society as a whole. More considered positions do exist, but they tend to be marginalised. Real debate is confined largely to the question of the means by which the conflict is to be conducted.

Joe Biden, in his first conversation as president with the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, spoke of his concern about China’s “coercive and unfair economic practices” as well as human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region, according to a White House account of their telephone call.Biden also expressed misgivings about the country’s growing restrictions on political freedoms in Hong Kong and “increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan,” in the call. Rob Petty, co-CEO and co-CIO for Fiera Capital (Asia) is among those who think that Biden’s diplomatic experience will provide a more positive steer. ‘We expect the tone of US/China relations to become more professional and less polemical under a Biden administration. The foreign and trade policy leadership teams in this administration are deeply experienced internationally and with China specifically,’ he said.

In the Indo-Pacific, new secretary of state Antony Blinken has re-committed the US to the defence of the Philippines, reaffirmed the strength of the United States-Thailand defence alliance, rejected China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea, and pledged to stand with Southeast Asian claimants in the face of Beijing’s pressure. This followed the Biden administration’s assurances to Japan over the defence of the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which China claims and calls the Diaoyu. Blinken has also underlined the importance of cooperation, including through multilateral organizations and mechanisms like the Quad, to tackle shared challenges in his outreach to regional US partners like Australia, Japan and India.

China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi recently urged the Biden administration to “rise above the outdated mentality of zero-sum, major-power rivalry and work with China to keep the relationship on the right track.” Jiechi reminded the US that Beijing expects Washington “to honour its commitment under the three Sino-US joint communiques” and abide by the ‘One China’ principle, as “these issues concern China’s core interests, national dignity as well as the sentiments of its 1.4 billion people”, thereby constituting “a red line that must not be crossed.”

Some think that Biden may be able to reverse many of his predecessor’s policies with the wave of a wand — in the form of executive orders as he has done in returning to the Paris climate accord on his first day in office — but dealing with China is an entirely different matter. This challenge involves a delicate balancing act of upholding democratic values and competing economically and geopolitically, all the while seeking a path for cooperation on existential issues such as climate change and the pandemic. The U.S. was seen as ceding leadership to China in certain areas including in trade with Asian countries, after it withdrew from the Trans Pacific Partnership under former President Donald Trump, and on climate change after it pulled out of the Paris Agreement.

Importantly, the deterioration of U.S.-China relations has complicated the capacity of both sides to work together on climate change, yet such renewed engagement is vitally important. Reviving climate coordination will depend both upon getting the mix of competition and collaboration right in the overall relationship and upon the extent to which both countries are prepared to dramatically ramp up their climate action. President Biden has made clear his commitment to putting the United States on a path to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Factually, China’s record on the clean energy transition is far better than the US.

Some American diplomats think that Biden will need to make clear to President Xi Jinping the centrality of climate change to his national security vision and the mutual opportunity for the United States and China if they are ready to embrace aggressive climate action. At the same time, the United States will need to deploy additional tools, working closely with Europe and other allies, to demonstrate that anything less than a genuine recognition of the climate imperative will be unacceptable.

This evaluation of China’s orientation toward the United States remained largely intact through January 2020, when both sides finalized negotiations on a “phase-1” trade deal. In the weeks that followed, the bilateral dynamic shifted sharply.  Facing the humanitarian and financial losses resulting from the uncontrolled spread of COVID-19, President Trump shifted from touting Xi Jinping as his friend to branding China as his enemy and the source of the pain that many Americans were feeling.

To be continued

The writer is an independent ‘IR’ researcher and international law analyst based in Pakistan.jpg