With the U.S. presidential election looming ever closer, an article in Foreign Affairs from Johns Hopkins’ Jessica Chen Weiss called for a new approach to China policy from the next administration:
To be sure, both Democratic and Republican politicians have engaged in the typical campaign ploy of sounding tough on China. During their recent debate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris accused former President Donald Trump of selling out American interests and praising Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and Trump erroneously claimed that “China was paying us hundreds of billions of dollars” under his administration’s tariffs (which the Biden administration has expanded). Meanwhile, the drumbeat of hyperbolic rhetoric and congressional hearings on the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party has blurred the line between legitimate commercial, scientific, and educational pursuits involving Chinese entities and those that pose unacceptable security risks or invite other vulnerabilities. Fearing that what might have been welcome yesterday could be deemed disloyal today, companies, researchers, and students have pulled back from many of the activities that have underpinned U.S. economic and scientific leadership.
Yet beneath this charged atmosphere, ample space for debate and discernment remains. The apparent hardening of a U.S. consensus on China is shallower and wobblier than it appears. In this fluid environment, there is an opportunity for the next presidential administration to develop a more affirmative, less reactive approach, one that dials down the heat and focuses on reducing the risks while preserving the benefits of the vast web of ties that connect the United States and China.
U.S. policymakers should seek a more durable basis for coexistence, striking a careful balance to ensure that efforts to address the real threats from China do not undermine the very values and interests they aim to protect. Deterrence, particularly in the Taiwan Strait, can be achieved only with the backing of strong diplomacy that combines credible threats and credible assurances. And both deterrence and prosperity require some degree of economic integration and technological interdependence. If policymakers overplay competition with Beijing, they risk more than raising the likelihood of war and jeopardizing efforts to address the many transnational challenges that threaten both the United States and China. They also risk setting the United States on a path to what could become a pyrrhic victory, in which the country undermines its own long-term interests and values in the name of thwarting its rival. [Source]
Chen Weiss goes on to note that “[p]rominent Republicans have accused the Biden administration of weakening the United States’ position by prioritizing diplomatic engagement over more confrontational measures designed to undermine the Chinese government.” At The Atlantic on Friday, though, Michael Schuman highlighted recent less confrontational signals from the most prominent Republican of all:
[… It’s] striking that this year, campaigning for reelection, Trump appears to be softening his stance. He trots out the old rhetoric—accusing the Chinese of stealing American jobs, taking advantage of the United States, and starting the coronavirus pandemic, which he still calls the “China virus,” for example—but he has also sounded a different note, suggesting that the U.S. needs better relations with Beijing to reduce the threat China poses to international security. Exactly how he intends to achieve this without sacrificing core American interests, he has not made clear.
Trump’s foreign policy tended to be transactional, focused on dealmaking and devoid of guiding strategic principles. During his term, he sought “wins” that allowed him to show off his (supposedly) superior negotiating skill to a domestic audience. With China, that approach led him to focus on a trade war that kept him haggling over tariffs, largely to the exclusion of other important issues. He still brags (and dissembles) about the resulting trade agreement, reached in 2020, describing it as “the best trade deal” ever made, even though Beijing never fulfilled its terms.
Ali Wyne, a senior research and advocacy adviser on U.S.-China relations at International Crisis Group, argues that Trump may have believed that the trade pact was a prelude to a larger, more comprehensive agreement with Beijing that would have settled many contentious matters between the two countries. “Trump still holds out some hope that he might be able to execute some kind of grand bargain,” Wyne told me, “and then claim that ‘look, I was able to achieve a breakthrough in stabilizing the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship that none of my predecessors could.’”
A “grand bargain” with China has obvious appeal. The question is what it would cost. A persistent worry in foreign-policy circles is that Trump will make concessions to Beijing on issues that have been historically crucial to the United States, but about which he personally seems to care little—such as the fate of Taiwan—in exchange for promises on matters he clearly considers more important, such as trade. [Source]
On Tuesday, Trump shared a video ad, laden with “chop suey” fonts and “Kung Fu Fighting” jingles, which accused Harris’ running mate Tim Walz of being a “Chinese stooge” based on his longstanding connections to China—a frequent line of attack in recent weeks. At Foreign Policy soon after Walz’s selection, Paul Musgrave concluded that based on his connections with and public positions on China, “[I]t seems more likely than not that Walz would be neither inflexibly hostile nor naïve about relations with Beijing.” At World Politics Review, the University of Notre Dame’s Mary Gallagher argued that Walz’s experience with China would be an asset, not a vulnerability, for a future Harris-Walz administration and for the U.S. itself:
[…] Walz’s contributions to a potential Harris administration’s approach to China are likely to be more effective and better-informed than someone with more-recent experience of China. This is because he first encountered the country not during the go-go days of the early 2000s, when interest in China as a consumer market and a manufacturing powerhouse was at a fever pitch, but rather just after 1989, at a time of immense tragedy and domestic political crisis. As Walz knows firsthand, the contours of today’s repressive political landscape under Chinese President Xi Jinping are not unprecedented when considering the long arc of China’s reform era, which has lurched between waves of liberalization and openness, and crackdowns against both.
[…] Indeed, judging from his record and statements, Walz’s early experiences in China immediately after the 1989 crackdown have not fostered a sympathetic stance to the Chinese Communist Party. As for Harris, she played an important role while serving in the Senate pushing for bills that condemned China’s treatment of its ethnic Uyghur minority as well as crackdowns on Hong Kong’s political freedoms. So it’s conceivable that Harris and Walz could collaborate on crafting a China policy that is tougher on Beijing’s human rights record than either Biden or Trump, who for all his attacks on China, regularly praised Xi as being “like a king” and ruling 1.4 billion people with “an iron fist.”
The perspective-enriching experiences that Walz and I benefited from have now become increasingly difficult for U.S. citizens to access. China’s closed political environment has made it more difficult for scholars and students to do research on and study in the country. Archives are difficult to access. Research interviews and surveys are harder to complete. And academic collaborations have become risky. Meanwhile, in the U.S., knowledge and in-country experience in China is no longer rewarded. In Washington, many who have such skills are met with increased suspicion and criticism. Knowledge about and experience in China is seen as a sign of collusion with a repressive authoritarian government that challenges the U.S. global position, as evidenced by the Republican attacks targeting Walz today.
This is not only unfortunate. It undermines U.S. interests if such expertise is not used and appreciated by those crafting Washington’s China policy. [Source]
