US-China ties: Biden has limited time to repair Trump’s damage, say analysts
- US President-elect Joe Biden has just over a year to build better ties with Beijing, according to a panel organised by Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute
- But ‘China-bashing’, rising nationalism and different values, especially on Hong Kong, human rights and the South China Sea, could stand in the way
Zack Cooper, research fellow at the Washington-based think tank American Enterprise Institute, felt that Biden’s election victory gave the US a “real opportunity” to shift the debate on America’s role in Asia.
China says ‘new window of hope’ is open in relations with US
Cooper’s remarks come as tension between the two world powers intensifies. The relationship, marked by a bitter tariff war over the past year, has been tumultuous as both sides frequently spar over issues ranging from politics to trade and their responses to the coronavirus pandemic.
But he added that the window for Washington to understand and build better ties with Beijing could be short. “Just a little bit more than a year,” he felt, citing multiple constraints, including the “damage” the Trump administration inflicted on China in the past four years.
“The current China narrative in the United States is far from a rational one. Rather, it is a mixture of fear, prejudices, misperception, self righteousness, and even paranoia,” said Wang. “China-bashing now unfortunately has become a political correctness.”
The rise of populism and nationalism in the US and China would also stand in the way, he said. Asked what he thought constituted a well-managed US-China relationship, Wang said it should not be one driven by ideologies, and instead, should be a pragmatic one.
And while competition should still exist between the two, he felt it should have a “bottom line”.
“In the past few years, what the Trump administration has been pursuing is really a strategic competition with China, with no sorts of limits,” he said, adding that this was why there were earlier fears it could morph into a new Cold War of sorts. “Competition has to be constructive, and it has to be bounded.”
What 2021 holds for US-China relations, Hong Kong and Australia-China trade
On the economic and trade front, he felt the two nations should try to resolve differences in a constructive manner. In the next five to 10 years, he said, there was a possibility that a new equilibrium in US-China relations could be restored. This, he said, could take the form of a new trade relationship that could serve as a “ballast” for bilateral ties.
“Instead of decoupling, we should in fact try to recover or re-link the two economies on the basis of reciprocity, respect of rules, and mutual benefits,” added Wang.
Cooper agreed that trade and investment was the “biggest stressor” in recent years that needed to be tackled. But he felt this was not the most important from the US perspective, casting doubt that bilateral ties could be easily salvaged.
“These things have all contributed to a view in Washington that actually the US and China … have different core values and I don’t think that is going away any time soon,” he said, adding that his hunch was that the Biden administration would be more vocal on human rights and democracy issues.
“That is not an issue that is going to be solved in the US-China relationship,” he said. “We are going to see different issues that are all going to be siloed and different amounts of cooperation for each of them but I’m pretty pessimistic that we’ll see a reversion to where things were three or four years ago. I think we’re in a new world and it’s going to be really hard to get away from that.”