U.S — China Foreign Policy under Biden: More of the Same, or New Pastures?

The past few decades have seen China take up a larger and larger part of presidential foreign policy platforms. China’s rapid industrial rise, mobilizing hundreds of millions of workers, has launched it and its ideology to near the top of the international order. President Obama especially emphasized its importance, making a point to visit the country during the first year of his presidency even as an economic disaster roared back in the U.S. President Trump also understood the critical nature of the relationship, and presidents Clinton and Bush both saw China as the ultimate candidate for liberalization, which would have proved the ideology’s total superiority. Unfortunately, the latter two presidents failed in convincing China of the merits of a free society: today its citizens rights are weak and its surveillance state is strong. All the while, the government still flies the flag of communism. Presidents Trump and Obama (though Obama later in his presidency) seemed to realize the hopelessness of conversion to liberalism, and instead focused on other strategies. Presently, President Biden is tasked with deciding on how he will follow up the previous presidents’ actions against China. Most pressing will be his decision of policy in relation to President Trump: will he pursue similarly loud, high pressure techniques? Or will he seek to forego such punishments in hopes of a beneficial alliance? While his overarching policy is that he will be tough on China, his actions in individual situations matter far more. The current destabilized nature of the world has borne smaller than expected effects on China’s still-steamrolling growth, proving to some its place as a joint global hegemon, or close to it. Now, it is President Biden’s job to prove them wrong.

Trump’s trade war against China punctuated a large part of his presidency. The tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, supposed to render American products more competitive in the face of ultra-cheap SOE-produced merchandise, ended up hitting countries such as Japan and South Korea rather than their intended target. Still, the sentiment was there: Trump was no fan of China’s aggressive trade practices, along with many other of their routines. Of course, that comes with caveats. Trump praised China’s “transparency” surrounding the coronavirus on the eve of the pandemic getting out of control, and once stated that he and Xi Jinping “love each other”. Nevertheless, these confusing contradictions should not detract from a Trump administration that did, to the very best of its (limited) ability, attempt to be hard on China.

Biden’s administration has shown a similar attitude toward China. Anthony Blinken, Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State, condemned the action China has taken toward Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. He agreed with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that it is in fact a genocide. Blinken also acknowledged the magnitude of dealing with China, calling it “the most significant challenge of any nation state to the United States.” Additionally, he supports Taiwan’s independence, crowning it “a model of democracy”, surely drawing the ire of Xi Jinping. Elsewhere in Biden’s cabinet, Janet Yellen, the nominee for Secretary of the Treasury, has issued similar statements on China, saying “[China is] our most important competitor”, echoing Blinken. “I think China is … our most significant challenge going forward”, said Lloyd Austin, Biden’s pick for Secretary of Defense. The consensus is clear: the Biden administration rightly acknowledges China not only as an economic threat, but as a competitor for global hegemony.

President Biden himself holds no conflicting personal opinions on China. He has acknowledged its threat toward the US in the past, particularly on competition related to research and technology. In his Foreign Affairs article, “Why America Must Lead Again”, Biden wrote “There is no reason we should be falling being China or anyone else when it comes to clean energy, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, 5G, high-speed rail, or the race to end cancer as we know it.” While this is also a statement about bolstering America’s scientific output, the fact that it references China directly in an area of the essay not devoted to foreign affairs speaks volumes about the depth of the intrusion China’s boom has created.

While Biden plans to executive order his way through a mass of Trump’s major policies in his first few weeks in office, he has been quiet on the tariffs levied against China. With Trump burning ties between the US and its allies during his time in office, much foreign policy was enacted unilaterally. The Biden Administration will most certainly operate differently, instead leveraging those same allies in multilateral arrangements which both directly and indirectly affect Chinese trade deals. Biden could help return the World Trade Organization (WTO) to relevancy by reversing the veto against Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala becoming its new director-general, or recommit itself to supporting the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its endeavours surrounding the provision of financial aid for emerging economies. That last possibility in particular would represent not just a return to the international community, but a restart of the quest to spread the ideology of American liberalism worldwide. The lack of importance placed on distributing foreign aid during Trump’s presidency represents only part of the damage the liberal world order sustained over the past 4 years. Perhaps just as damaging was his rhetoric, centering around “America First” and expressing a disdain for providing aid to needy countries. Biden now has the opportunity to clarify that Trump’s presidency was but an aside from the US’ mission to cultivate liberalism worldwide.

This requirement to shore up the world order is made even more urgent by China’s opening acts in the spreading of their own ideologies and ideals. Their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has extended a hand to countries in dire need of infrastructure support, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Cambodia. In a time when America has tightened its purse strings and self-sabotaged its own liberal message, China has invested in ameliorating its own regional position. The BRI can be seen as China’s challenge to the US in their ideological missions: in a quasi Cold War manner, there are global powers competing for the attention of smaller countries.

Of course, thus far the BRI has not been a complete success. The coronavirus became a priority for countries with BRI debt, with many loanees unable to service the loans they received. Africa especially is experiencing this problem with it being unlikely the $8 billion USD-worth of debt maintenance fees due this year will be repaid fully, or even majorly. There are also suggestions of the BRI being an example of “debt-trap diplomacy”, where a weaker country becomes incredibly indebted to a more powerful state, giving it significant amounts of leverage. An example of such diplomacy is found in a case involving Tajikistan, when the country was forced to cede over one thousand square kilometres of land to China due to its high levels of debt. That said, even with its numerous issues the BRI has resulted in a steady increase of Chinese soft power in vulnerable nations. With China so actively attempting to improve its standing in the international community, Biden will be forced to either match China’s enthusiasm, surpass it, or risk the continuing dissolution of global liberalism.

Another issue the new administration will have to confront early on is that of the South China Sea (SCS). Domination of the SCS by China would cement them as the regional hegemon while also giving them the credentials to properly challenge the US for global hegemony. The US saw itself as the protector of the SCS under the previous administration, with Trump calling China’s actions in the area “bullying”, and rejecting most all of its related territorial claims. Biden must now decide the level of aggression for the future strategy surrounding the area. The new administration will continue recognizing the arbitral triumph by the Philippines in the West Philippine Sea, and Jake Sullivan, Biden’s nominee for national security adviser, seems keen to upgrade current operations. “We should be devoting more assets and resources to ensuring and reinforcing, and holding up alongside our partners, the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.”, he said last year. Whether that means deployment of yet another carrier group to the region (bringing the total to three) or investing in asymmetric-themed weaponry such as improved anti-ship missiles is unknown, but the intention of growing the US’ presence is clear.

Finally, President Biden must decide on how he will approach the ongoing trade war. Thus far he has not been explicit on his decision, but political pundits seem to think he will give it more time. The trade war’s lack of a clear winner so far may be attributed to the size of its participants: it reminds one of two heavyweight boxers with an unending ability to take punches, reminding each other that “they can do this all day”. Clearly it will take more than losses on certain commodities or cleverly placed sanctions to turn the tides of the world’s second largest economy. In some ways, this makes the trade war more symbolic than anything else, as it proves the U.S’ refusal to concede China’s steady accumulation of power. The billions of dollars lost on either side are (almost) meaningless when compared to the message it projects.

This is not a new phenomenon, at least in concept. The Great War saw generals push thousands upon thousands of men hopelessly to their death as they ran into machine guns, their sacrifice hardly denting the concrete-backed trenches of the other side. Yet it continued on and on: the exchange of a thousand men for a few hundred metres of land seemed a good one to top brass. If those commanders were alive to be questioned today, surely an argument that would arise is “What else were we to do? Sit and wait for the Germans to come and do the exact same thing, but to us?”. In some ways the trade war echoes this. Few believe that lower returns from steel and aluminum would have seriously made China reconsider its oppressive policies toward its citizens, or bow to American economic demands. Instead, it was more so a question that commanders faced between 1914 and 1918: is there anything else we can really do?

President Biden now has the responsibility to answer that question. His administration takes power at a time when they can shape the future of the relationship more than any of his recent predecessors. How this relationship evolves, both rhetorically through the words of both countries’ leaders, and specifically through the actual policies enacted, will impact the state of the U.S’ hegemony for decades to come.