Since assuming office in 2016, US President Donald Trump has waged a trade war worth billions of dollars against China, has put all the blame on it for the coronavirus pandemic, calling it the “Chinese virus” on multiple occasions and has taken action against several Chinese tech firms. The US-China bilateral relations nosedived during the Trump presidency.
Despite this, a second Trump term could be beneficial for the nationalist China that is seeking to assert itself as the next superpower.
Trump’s America has from a sprawling Asia-Pacific commercial deal and climate agreements, imposed billions of dollars of tariffs on Chinese goods and withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization at the height of a global pandemic.
Where the US has retreated, China’s Xi Jinping stepped in. He has presented his country as the champion of free trade and a leader in the fight against climate change, as well as vowed to share any potential COVID-19 vaccine with poorer nations.
“A second Trump term could give China more time to rise as a great power on the world stage,” Zhiqun Zhu, professor of political science and international relations, Bucknell University, told AFP.
With Trump clinching victory on November 3, China’s leadership could be handed “the opportunity to boost its global standing as a champion for globalisation, multilateralism, and international cooperation,” Zhu added.
Philippe Le Corre, a China expert at the Harvard Kennedy School in the United States, agreed an extension of Trump’s ‘America First’ policies would be of long-term benefit for Beijing, AFP reported.
“(It) partially cuts Washington off from its traditional allies,” he told AFP.
And that gave China room to manoeuvre, he added.
China’s nationalists have openly cheered, or jeered, for Trump.
“You can make America eccentric and thus hateful for the world,” Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of China’s chest-beating nationalist paper Global Times, said in a tweet.
“You help promote unity in China,” he added.
‘China has lost out enormously’
Despite China making gains in projecting itself as a global power, Trump has inflicted economic and political pain on it.
“China has lost out enormously in its plan for trade and technology,” Beijing-based political analyst Hua Po told AFP.
In January the US and China signed a deal bringing a partial truce in their trade war that obliged Beijing to import an additional $200 billion in American products over two years, ranging from cars to machinery and oil to farm products.
Washington has also turned its guns on Chinese tech firms it says poses security threats, throwing the future US operations of video-sharing app TikTok — owned by Chinese parent company Bytedance — into uncertainty.
Mobile giant Huawei is also on Trump’s hitlist.
The enmity also extends into defence and human rights, with Taiwan, Hong Kong and the treatment of China’s Muslim Uighur minority all making waves in US.
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What can China expect in case of Joe Biden’s presidency?
If Democratic challenger Joe Biden wins the presidency, he is expected to renew American leadership on human rights, pressing China on issues of the Uighurs, Tibet and freedom in Hong Kong.
“Biden is likely to be tougher than Trump on human rights issues in Xinjiang and Tibet,” Zhu told AFP.
And on tech and trade — crucial flash points in the US-China rivalry — it is unclear just how much room a Biden White House would have to manoeuvre.
“Biden will inherit the tariffs, and I’m doubtful he would lift them unilaterally,” Bonnie Glaser, Director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told AFP.
“Beijing will probably have to concede to other US demands if it wants the tariffs lifted,” he added.
“Politically, it will be almost impossible for Biden to reverse these policies,” Theresa Fallon, director of the Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies in Brussels, told AFP.
