It's official: Joe Biden and Donald Trump have locked up their party's respective nominations and will be meeting face-to-face in November for a general election rematch.
The world has taken notice. Of all the elections that will occur this year, the 2024 U.S. presidential race is by far the most important. U.S. allies, partners, and adversaries alike are anticipating the result, drafting contingency plans and making preparations to better understand what a Biden or Trump presidency would mean for their respective interests. Japan, for instance, has ordered its embassy in Washington to reach out to Trump's orbit. South Korea, meanwhile, has agreed to start cost-sharing talks about the U.S. troop presence in their country earlier than usual, hoping to ensure the U.S. military will stick around in the event of a Trump victory.
China is no exception. Yet there's one big difference between China and everybody else: regardless of who the next U.S. president is, Beijing will still be facing a United States that is, if not outright hostile to China, then at least highly adverse to it. As one Chinese scholar told The Washington Post this week, "Biden and Trump are like two bowls of poison for China."
That's hyperbole, but the underlying sentiment isn't far off. Trump and Biden disagree on everything from the tax code and immigration and alliances, but they both agree that China will be America's peer competitor for the long-term. One can say the same thing about Republicans and Democrats in Washington generally; the two parties may be at each other's throats, but China is the one area where consensus can be reached—so much so that the highly divisive House of Representatives was able to establish an entire special committee focusing on the Chinese Communist Party. The latest set of recommendations from that committee, adopted on a bipartisan bases, included adding more Chinese-linked entities to U.S. export control bans, putting China in its own tariff column, and requiring regular reports to Congress on the number of China-associated assets held by Americans.
Even so, to assume that Biden or Trump would have the same China strategy would be inaccurate. While the goals—containing China's rise, undermining its military development, and compelling Beijing to respect international trade rules—may be identical, that's where the similarities end. Trump, for example, often acted like a classic unilateralist: he did things, like withdrawing from multilateral trade pacts, slapping tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of Chinese goods, and pressuring European allies to strip Huawei from its telecommunications infrastructure, that could be a bit brusque.
In contrast, Biden has been more multilateralist in his approach, hoping allies and partners in Europe and Asia will align their views on China with Washington's own. In some respects, this strategy has succeeded—key chipmakers like the Netherlands, for example, have adopted stronger export restrictions on advanced chipmaking equipment to Beijing, even if the Biden administration would like more aggressive action. In others, Biden has failed. Southeast Asia may be coming around to the U.S. narrative about China as an aspiring hegemon, but countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Cambodia don't want to pick sides between Washington and Beijing. Instead, they prefer to have strong relations with both.
For China, each U.S. presidential candidate has upsides and downsides. Trump was a bull in a china shop (no pun intended), taking pride in doing the opposite of what the so-called foreign policy and economic establishment recommended. He relished getting into a trade war with China, America's largest trading partner, in a bid to reduce the U.S.-China trade deficit. When COVID-19 swept across the U.S. in 2020 and 2021, killing thousands of Americans a day at its peak, Trump lashed out at China for spreading the virus. He even kept it up even after leaving office, suggesting Beijing pay the world $10 trillion in damages.
At the same time, Trump had a decent working relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping and often bragged about their good personal chemistry. Trump signed a trade agreement with China in early 2020. Trump also had a tendency to poke at Europe, complicating what could have been a cohesive U.S.-Europe bloc against China.
Biden is a lot more predictable than Trump ever was, and the Chinese love predictability. Biden has spent his tenure trying to stabilize the U.S.-China relationship, a process that involves establishing regular meetings between U.S. and Chinese officials, forming joint working groups on specific issues (like fentanyl precursors) to explore whether common solutions can be struck, and re-opening the military-to-military communication lines that Beijing severed after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's 2022 trip to Taiwan.
Unlike Trump, however, Biden has made it his mission to strengthen U.S. alliances in East Asia to contain Chinese power. Japan and South Korea, which had a years-long spat over World War II-era history, are now conducting military exercises with one another. Japan and the Philippines, two U.S. treaty allies, are increasing their military cooperation as well, particularly in the seas. The AUKUS accords will provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, allowing Canberra to project itself deeper into the Pacific. None of this is good for China.
Trump and Biden pose their own unique challenges to Chinese policymakers. Regardless of whoever wins the 2024 U.S. presidential election, China is likely to lose.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Whether Biden or Trump Wins the Presidential Election, China Loses
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14.03.2024
It's official: Joe Biden and Donald Trump have locked up their party's respective nominations and will be meeting face-to-face in November for a general election rematch.
The world has taken notice. Of all the elections that will occur this year, the 2024 U.S. presidential race is by far the most important. U.S. allies, partners, and adversaries alike are anticipating the result, drafting contingency plans and making preparations to better understand what a Biden or Trump presidency would mean for their respective interests. Japan, for instance, has ordered its embassy in Washington to reach out to Trump's orbit. South Korea, meanwhile, has agreed to start cost-sharing talks about the U.S. troop presence in their country earlier than usual, hoping to ensure the U.S. military will stick around in the event of a Trump victory.
China is no exception. Yet there's one big difference between China and everybody else: regardless of who the next U.S. president is, Beijing will still be facing a United States that is, if not outright hostile to China, then at least highly adverse to it. As one Chinese scholar told The Washington Post this week, "Biden and Trump are like two bowls of poison for China."
That's hyperbole, but the underlying sentiment isn't far off. Trump and Biden disagree on everything from the tax code and immigration and alliances, but they both agree that China will be America's peer competitor for the long-term. One can say the same thing about........
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