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Don’t assume US-China relations will get better under Joe Biden, government adviser warns
- The good old days are over and US hawks are in the ascendant, says academic who briefed President Xi Jinping on foreign policy strategy
- Zheng Yongnian believes president-elect will have to take account of growing hostility towards Beijing from the American public and politicians
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Beijing must drop its illusions that the China-US relationship will automatically get better under a Biden presidency and should be prepared for a tougher stance from Washington, a Chinese government adviser has warned.
Zheng Yongnian, the dean of the Advanced Institute of Global and Contemporary China Studies, a Shenzhen-based think tank, said China should not miss any opportunity to mend relations with the United States but should not assume that relations with the US would return to how they were before Donald Trump’s rise to power.
“The good old days are over … the cold war hawks in the US have been in a highly mobilised state for several years, and they will not disappear overnight,” Zheng said in an interview on the sidelines of the Understanding China Conference in Guangzhou.
Zheng, who attended a symposium hosted by President Xi Jinping in August to offer advice on China’s long-term strategy, said there was now a bipartisan consensus in the US on containing China.
The relationship between China and the US has fallen to its lowest level since Beijing and Washington established formal diplomatic ties over 40 years ago, with the two countries clashing on a range of issues including trade, human rights and the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hostilities towards each other are on the rise and the latest Pew survey found that over 70 per cent of Americans have a bad impression of China.
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