Having secured enough electoral college votes to wrest the US presidency away from Donald Trump, former US vice-president Joe Biden is expected to initiate a major revision of American foreign policy, which has seen many dramatic turns under Trump.
This will no doubt include North Korea – a regional actor critical to China. Trump’s brash attempts at diplomacy there, notably his meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, did not pay off.
Trump also launched a trade war against China to hold it accountable for its unfair trade practices and intellectual property violations. However, the tariffs on around US$400 billion worth of Chinese goods brought the US more pain than gain, cutting the country’s gross domestic product by 0.3-0.7 per cent, rendering 300,000 Americans jobless and costing US companies US$1.7 trillion in the price of their stocks.
Biden is expected to roll back most of Trump’s foreign policy initiatives. In the foreign policy vision he laid out during his campaign, Biden said he would commence a coordinated campaign on North Korea with US allies and others, including China, to push Pyongyang to denuclearise.
Unlike Trump, Biden favours a cooperative approach that includes Chinese participation. For China, a Biden presidency might signal the opening of a window for dialogue on regional issues that had been stuck since Trump took office.
It is still unclear whether Biden would lift the Trump’s administration trade war tariffs on China or lead the US back into the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Biden has said that the Trans-Pacific Partnership would have enabled the US, not China, to write the “rules of the road” for global trade. He also labelled Trump’s trade war with China “self-defeating”. Criticising Trump’s use of tariffs as “fake toughness”, Biden said that, unlike Trump, he would use tariffs strategically to win.
Nevertheless, it appears Biden will start his term with domestic reforms aimed at reinvigorating the American economy – rather than forcing China to buy more American products – by promoting an expansionary monetary policy under his “Buy American” plan.
Some tariffs on China are likely to remain in place to help the US better control the mix of products in its market. But for the sake of American companies and to encourage the free flow of capital and open markets – the usual Democrat leitmotif, which the Obama-Biden administration also touted – Biden may significantly loosen some restrictions. However, it will be a while before this comes to pass; reversing the trade war or building a new Trans-Pacific Partnership-like structure cannot happen overnight.
For China, the negative aspect of a Biden presidency may be the continuation of some of Trump’s policies. It is unlikely that China can expect changes for the better in the US’ stance on the South China Sea and Taiwan, as both these issues were priorities of the Obama-Biden administration’s “pivot to Asia”. Freedom of navigation operations were initiated at that time and friendly overtures – including multibillion-dollar arms sales deals – to Taiwan experienced a spike.
Biden is also likely to push on with the ideological confrontation with China, which has intensified amid anti-China remarks by high-ranking US officials.
The new administration plans to spotlight democratic values in its foreign policy and economic planning by promoting human rights and “rallying friends in Asia and Europe in setting the rules of the road for the 21st century and joining [the US] to get tough on China” and its “hi-tech authoritarianism”. The latter is a relatively new turn of phrase by a high-level American politician.
Biden also aims to reimagine partnerships by focusing on Asian democracies – Japan, South Korea and Australia. Given Biden’s plans for the global promotion of democratic values, it is naive to expect any shifts in the US position on Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
Overall, China-US relations under Biden are likely to become less warlike and more predictable, but still antagonistic and challenging given the bipartisan consensus on a tougher China policy. Chinese experts expect Biden to stabilise bilateral relations to some extent.
For Biden to realise his plans, control of the Senate, which plays a key role in foreign policy planning, is important. It looks unlikely that the Democrats will gain control of the upper chamber of Congress. This may significantly narrow the new president’s leeway on the diplomatic front.
Unlike China, Russia should not expect any significant improvements in its relations with Washington, with the only exception being the New START arms control treaty, which Biden has vowed to extend. But this concession has been made out of strategic considerations, since it is the only remaining agreement between the world largest nuclear powers.
Sanctions are likely to stay, given that they are already deeply rooted in the psyche of the US political establishment. Biden said he plans to make Ukraine his administration’s foreign policy priority, assisting Kiev in many ways, including weapons. This would inevitably arouse Moscow’s ire.
Fundamentally, Biden will not bring tectonic changes to US foreign policy planning on China and Russia. He has slightly softened the rhetoric towards China, calling it a “competitor” while labelling Russia a “threat” and “opponent”. This could be a sign of shifting foreign policy priorities for the new administration.
Trump saw China’s political and economic build-up as the greatest threat while Biden, pursuing a more transatlantic approach, sees Russia as more dangerous vis-à-vis Europe and Nato.
Both Beijing and Moscow remain very cautious and have chosen to further strengthen bilateral ties, epitomised by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent remark that a military alliance between the two countries is “imaginable” – a possibility that Beijing did not reject.
Danil Bochkov is an expert at the Russian International Affairs Council