What does Biden’s
first 100 days tell us about his approach to China?
David Dollar ,
April 26 , 2021
When it comes to China, President Biden is largely
continuing Donald Trump’s approach. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has
indicated that there are three types of issue areas when it comes to China:
ones where we will confront China, ones where we will compete, and ones where
we can cooperate on the basis of common interests. In the first 100 days the
emphasis has been on confrontation, with competition also being prominent.
There is little evidence of cooperation, the one exception being Xi Jinping’s
participation in Biden’s virtual climate summit.
Confrontation
The Biden team was in no hurry to deal with China,
waiting a long time to schedule a first phone call between the presidents or to
have any high-level meetings. Secretary Blinken met with his counterpart, State
Councilor Yang Jiechi, in Alaska on the way back from his first overseas trip,
to Japan and South Korea. The meeting got off to a rocky start as Blinken
criticized China with the TV cameras rolling. This initial frosty exchange made
it clear that there would be no re-set in U.S.-China relations. Trump’s
Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, had made similarly harsh public statements
about China. One important nuance is that the Biden team has discontinued the
demonization of the Chinese Communist Party and the implied calls for regime
change.
On the security side, so far the Biden administration
has maintained and even stepped up enhanced engagement with Taiwan. They have
continued high-level contacts with Taiwanese officials and arms sales; under
the Taiwan Relations Act the U.S. has an obligation to ensure that Taiwan can
defend itself. The Defense Department is reviewing China policy. The likely
outcome of the review is some shift of military resources away from the Middle
East (witness the withdrawal from Afghanistan) to the Asia-Pacific to counter
China—within the context of a flat real defense budget proposed by the
president.
Competition
A third area of continuity is in the economic realm.
Candidate Biden criticized Trump’s tariffs aimed at China as a poorly targeted
instrument that hurts the American economy (a Federal Reserve study found that
they cost us more than 100,000 jobs). Nevertheless, the new administration is
leaving the tariffs in place for the moment, as well as the “Phase 1” trade
deal in which China agreed to make large purchases of specific American
products (soybeans and other agricultural products, oil and gas, manufactures).
This is a two-year agreement which at the mid-point is achieving mixed results.
U.S. exports to China are up and are a rare bright spot in U.S. trade, but the
amounts will fall far short of the agreed targets. USTR (United States Trade
Representative) Katherine Tai has indicated a willingness to negotiate with
China, but there are no talks planned and a lack of high-level appointees in
the Trade Representative’s Office, Treasury, and Commerce who would be needed
for comprehensive economic discussions.
Related
·
At 100
days, where does President Biden stand with the public?
·
The first
100 days: When did we start caring about them and why do they matter?
·
Technology has been emphasized by the new
administration as an area of competition with China. Biden’s language has been
more about seeing China as a competitor than as treating China as an adversary.
The administration is proposing ambitious spending on infrastructure, broadly
defined to include more funds for R&D and targeting of particular
technologies, and further spending on family-friendly policies such as
universal pre-K, improved health services, and support to taking care of the
aged. In the administration and in Congress much of this is defended as needed
to compete with China and to prevent China from dominating the technologies of
the future. These efforts to increase innovation in the U.S. are complemented
by various efforts to limit diffusion of technology to China via export and
investment restrictions. These policies started under Trump and have been
modestly expanded under Biden. Treasury and Commerce Departments are reviewing
these sanctions and there may be some modest fine-tuning once the reviews are
over.
Cooperation
The only real area of cooperation between China and
the U.S. so far is that President Xi Jinping was one of the dozens of heads of
state who participated in Biden’s virtual climate summit on April 22. Xi
recently announced the goal of carbon neutrality by 2060, a less ambitious
target than the 2050 date set by Biden, the EU, and Japan. Xi did not use the
event to alter China’s recent pledge, but stressed that the rich countries have
a special obligation to reduce carbon emissions quickly and to provide promised
financing to assist the developing world adjust to a low-carbon future. The
summit was a useful pressure point in advance of the UN climate summit in
Glasgow in November. Climate could be an area of cooperation between China and
the West, though it could also devolve into a new competition as the U.S.
administration pressures China to set more ambitious targets, to get serious
about them in the current five-year plan, and to stop financing coal-fired
power plants throughout the developing world as part of its Belt and Road
Initiative.
What we have learned from the first 100 days is that
we are likely to have both a confrontational and competitive relationship with
China, similar to Trump’s policy but with some important nuances. President
Biden has emphasized rebuilding partnerships with allies in order to counter
China. The allies welcome the return of the U.S. to multilateralism, but most
of them are not interested in a new Cold War. This was evident in Blinken’s
visit to South Korea, initial discussions with European allies, and the visit
of Japanese Prime Minister Suga to Washington. Our allies have deeper trade and
investment relations with China than we do; and, in fact, since Biden’s
election the EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and ASEAN have all
signed new economic agreements with China. There is some contradiction between
the U.S. confronting China and working multilaterally, so it is likely that
over time Biden’s China policy will have to become either less confrontational
or more unilateral.
Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Global Economy and Development, John L. Thornton China Center
No comments:
Post a Comment