China-U.S. Relations - Biden
The Democratic Party’s proposed platform criticizes China’s trade practices, proposes less spending on national defense, and opposes “forever wars” as it seeks to lay out the party’s foreign policy goals and highlight differences with President Donald Trump. China became one of the central foreign policy issues in the 2020 presidential race, heightened by President Donald Trump’s trade war with the country as well as the coronavirus pandemic, which originated there. In their party platform, Democrats took a strong stance against China’s trade policies and sought to portray Trump’s efforts against the country as not tough enough.
"The Trump Administration has failed time after time to deliver for American workers on this crucial issue, siding with corporate interests over our workers and launching a trade war with China that they have no plan for winning—creating incredible hardship for American farmers, manufacturers, workers, and consumers in the process….
"Democrats will take aggressive action against China or any other country that tries to undercut American manufacturing by manipulating their currencies and maintaining a misaligned exchange rate with the dollar, dumping products like steel and aluminum in our markets, or providing unfair subsidies. Unlike President Trump, we will stand up to efforts from China and other state actors to steal America’s intellectual property and will demand China and other countries cease and desist from conducting cyberespionage against our companies.... We will build on this foundation to negotiate arms control agreements that reflect the emergence of new players like China, capture new technologies, and move the world back from the nuclear precipice....
"Democrats believe that if the United States does not work with its allies and partners to shape the terms of global trade, China will shape them for us—and American working families and the middle class will pay the price. That’s why we will work with our allies to mobilize more than half the world’s economy to stand up to China and negotiate from the strongest possible position.
"Democrats believe the China challenge is not primarily a military one, but we will deter and respond to aggression. We will underscore our global commitment to freedom of navigation and resist the Chinese military’s intimidation in the South China Sea. Democrats are committed to the Taiwan Relations Act and will continue to support a peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues consistent with the wishes and best interests of the people of Taiwan.
"Rather than stand with President Xi Jinping as he cracks down on Hong Kong’s autonomy, Democrats will stand for the democratic rights of its citizens. We will fully enforce the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, including by sanctioning officials, financial institutions, companies, and individuals responsible for undercutting Hong Kong’s autonomy. And we will bring the world together to condemn the internment of more than one million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in concentration camps in China, using the tools provided by the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act."
Biden claimed credit for paving the way to the Paris Agreement by convincing China to enter into an earlier landmark climate deal with the United States, in 2014. But his rhetoric changed in recent years as U.S.-China relations have deteriorated. In a June 2020 op-ed in Foreign Affairs, Biden said his climate agenda would include “insisting that China — the world’s largest emitter of carbon — stop subsidizing coal exports and outsourcing pollution to other countries by financing billions of dollars’ worth of dirty fossil fuel energy projects through its Belt and Road Initiative.”
"To win the competition for the future against China or anyone else, the United States must sharpen its innovative edge and unite the economic might of democracies around the world to counter abusive economic practices and reduce inequality.... The United States does need to get tough with China. If China has its way, it will keep robbing the United States and American companies of their technology and intellectual property. It will also keep using subsidies to give its state-owned enterprises an unfair advantage—and a leg up on dominating the technologies and industries of the future."
At a Democratic campaign event in Florida in October 2018, Biden said the U.S. was "better positioned than any nation in the world to own the 21st century," adding that China is "a divided country in 1,000 ways ... Don't tell me China's going to own America. It's not possible."
"China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man — They can't even figure out how to deal with the fact that they have this great division between the China Sea and the mountains in the West. They can't figure out how they’re going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. They’re not bad folks, folks … They’re not competition for us." Biden said at a campaign stop in Iowa on 02 May 2019.
On 22 May 2020 Biden said "For more than three years, President Trump has given Xi Jinping and autocrats around the world a pass on human rights. Trump has repeatedly turned a blind eye to China’s deepening repression in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and throughout China. In fact, just last November, Donald Trump declared that he was “standing with Xi Jinping” on Hong Kong and praised China’s leaders for acting “very responsibly.” Now we see the consequences: leaders in Beijing are proposing a law to further erode Hong Kong’s autonomy and the rights of its citizens. It is no surprise China’s government believes it can act with impunity to violate its commitments. The Administration’s protests are too little, too late — and Donald Trump has conspicuously had very little to say. We need to be clear, strong, and consistent on values when it comes to China. That’s what I’ll do as president."
“Right now, by every key metric, China’s strategic position is stronger, and America’s strategic position is weaker,” Antony Blinken, now U.S. secretary of state, told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce two months before the November 2020 presidential election.
President-elect Joe Biden planned to sign a series of executive orders soon after being sworn into office on 20 January 2021, demonstrating that the country’s politics had shifted and that his presidency would be guided by new priorities.
- Biden said on Day One he’ll reassure the US’s allies that “we’re back and you can count on us again.”
- rejoin the Paris climate accords
- reverse President Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization
- repeal the ban on almost all travel from some Muslim-majority countries
- reinstate the program allowing “dreamers,” who were brought to the USA illegally as children, to remain in the country,
But pushing major legislation through Congress could prove to be a challenge. In a 14 July 2020 speech, Biden promised that if elected, he would reverse Trump’s rollbacks used to enable fossil fuel extraction, like orders that allowed oil and gas companies to speed through permitting processes for new pipelines. Biden could also issue a number of his own executive orders to reduce extraction, like directing the Department of the Interior to halt oil and gas leases and fracking on federal lands.
Voice of America reported a list of US president-elect Joe Biden's potential advisors on China policies, including former deputy secretary of state Antony Blinken, former ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, former assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs Kurt Campbell, deputy director at the Center for a New American Security Ely Ratner, former national security advisors Jake Sullivan, Susan Rice and Thomas Donilon. According to their resumes, almost all of them come from the administration of former president Barack Obama.
Donilon in 2019 published an article in Foreign Affairs magazine, arguing that US incumbent President Donald Trump's trade war is "the wrong way to compete with China," and the US should focus on renewal, rather than protectionism. Blinken said in September that, "China's strategic position is stronger and ours is weaker as a result of President Trump's leadership." He also said that Trump left "a vacuum in the world for China to fill." Campbell and Sullivan wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2019 that, "the goal should be to establish favorable terms of coexistence with Beijing in four key competitive domains - military, economic, political and global governance."
Judging from the narratives from these advisors, the goal of Biden administration's China policy is almost identical to that of the Trump administration, albeit more tactfully stated. The Biden administration will continue to regard China as its main rival, seeing China as the biggest threat to maintain its position as a global hegemony. However, Biden will differ from Trump on dealing with this challenge.
Blinken said Trump had weakened American alliances, abandoned US values and gave China a green light to trample on so-called human rights and democracy. This reflects the reality that the Biden administration will underline human rights and democracy, and will create an ideological alliance by uniting its allies such as Europe, Japan and South Korea in a bid to pile pressure on China.
Biden used his first visit to the Pentagon as commander in chief 10 February 2021 to announce the formation of a new Defense Department China Task Force, charged with reexamining the U.S. approach in areas from strategy and force posture to technology and intelligence. “The task force will work quickly, drawing on civilian and military experts across the department to provide within the next few months recommendations to [Defense] Secretary [Lloyd] Austin on key priorities and decision points so that we can chart a strong path forward on China-related matters," Biden told reporters.
A March 2021 Pew poll found that Americans express substantial concern when asked about eight specific issues in the U.S.-China relationship. About three-quarters or more say that each issue is at least somewhat serious. Still, four problems stand out for being ones that half or more describe as very serious: cyberattacks from China, the loss of U.S. jobs to China, China’s growing military power and China’s policies on human rights. Tensions between mainland China and Hong Kong or Taiwan are seen as less serious problems for most Americans. While about three-quarters say these two geopolitical issues are at least somewhat serious problems, only about three-in-ten say they are very serious.
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi elaborated China's three bottom lines in effectively managing and controlling divergences in China-US relations during his meeting with US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on 26 July 2021 during Sherman's visit to north China's port city of Tianjin.
- the US should not challenge, smear or seek to subvert the Chinese path and system
- should not seek to interrupt or disrupt China's development
- should not violate China's national sovereignty or territorial integrity
Such a proactive way of laying out Beijing's bottom lines and elaborating major concerns to Washington followed a hardline diplomatic approach, first used at the China-US Alaska meeting in March 2021.
On 26 July 2021 Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng handed down a "List of US Wrongdoings that Must Stop" and a "List of Key Individual Cases that China Has Concerns". This came in a meeting between US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng, who is in-charge of the US-China relations. In the List of U.S. Wrongdoings that Must Stop, China urged the United States to:
- unconditionally revoke the visa restrictions over Communist Party of China (CPC) members and their families
- revoke sanctions on Chinese leaders, officials and government agencies
- remove visa restrictions on Chinese students
- stop suppressing Chinese enterprises
- stop harassing Chinese students
- stop suppressing the Confucius Institutes
- revoke the registration of Chinese media outlets as "foreign agents" or "foreign missions"
- revoke the extradition request for Meng Wanzhou
In the "List of Key Individual Cases that China Has Concerns", China expressed serious concerns to the United States on some key individual cases, including:
- some Chinese students' visa applications being rejected
- Chinese citizens receiving unfair treatment in the United States
- Chinese diplomatic and consular missions being harassed and rammed into by perpetrators in the United States
- growing anti-Asian and anti-China sentiment
- Chinese citizens suffering violent attacks
China has been more proactive in handling relations with the US. In the past, it was the US bringing up the lists toward which China responded. By taking the initiative, Chinese officials also demonstrated a 'new normal' in diplomacy. This solidified an important posture adjustment in China's approach to dealing with the US that began with the Anchorage talks: We will no longer make unilateral efforts to maintain the public opinion atmosphere in China-US relations.
The fundamental reason for the deadlock in China-US relations is that some in the US always see China as an "imaginary enemy," Xie told Sherman. "Washington has been trying to contain China, thinking that will solve its problems, as if the only way for the US to become great again is to contain China's development," Xie said.
The US hope may be that "by demonizing China, it could somehow shift domestic public discontent over political, economic and social issues and blame China for its own structural problems. It seems that a whole-of-government and whole-of-society campaign is being waged to bring China down," Xie told Sherman at the meeting. Before Sherman's visit to Tianjin, China used its newly enacted Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law for the first time to impose reciprocal sanctions on six US individuals and one entity, including former US secretary of commerce Wilbur Louis Ross. China seems to have no worries that this may affect the atmosphere of the Tianjin talks during Sherman's visit.
An unsigned editorial in Global Times [ie, representing the official Chinese Communist Party line], stated "Chinese society has become fed up with the bossy US and we hold no more illusion that China and the US would substantially improve ties in the foreseeable future. The Chinese public strongly supports the government to safeguard national dignity in its ties with the US and firmly push back the various provocations from the US. In the face of the malicious China containment and confrontational policy adopted by the two recent US administrations, the Chinese people are willing to form a united front, together bear the consequences of not yielding to the US, and win for the country's future through struggles. In other words, Chinese society would unconditionally support whatever tough counterattacks the Chinese government would launch in the face of US-initiated conflicts in all directions toward China. The US should abandon forever the idea of changing China's system and policies through sanctions, containment and intimidation.
"China must accelerate the building of its comprehensive strength and prepare for the worst-case scenario of escalating confrontation with the US and its main allies. The US wants to use strategic containment to crush China, and we must use continuous development and strength building to crush the US' will."
The Deputy Secretary raised concerns in private about a range of PRC actions that run counter to American values and interests and those of allies and partners, and that undermine the international rules-based order. In particular, she raised concerns about
- human rights, including Beijing’s anti-democratic crackdown in Hong Kong
- the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang
- abuses in Tibet
- the curtailing of media access and freedom of the press
- Beijing’s conduct in cyberspace
- the Taiwan Strait
- the East and South China Seas.
- the cases of American and Canadian citizens detained in the PRC or under exit bans
- the PRC’s unwillingness to cooperate with the World Health Organization and allow a second phase investigation in the PRC into COVID-19’s origins
At the same time, the Deputy Secretary affirmed the importance of cooperation in areas of global interest, such as the climate crisis, counternarcotics, nonproliferation, and regional concerns including DPRK, Iran, Afghanistan, and Burma.
A rare extended virtual meeting between the top leaders of the world's two major powers on 15 November 2021 concluded with the leaders agreeing on two consensuses in principle such as rejecting a new cold war and reaffirming the importance of China-US relations. Chinese President Xi Jinping had thorough and in-depth communication and exchanges with US President Joe Biden in a face-to-face virtual meeting between the two leaders which lasted three-and-a-half hours. It was a highly expected and closely watched interaction after the two leaders spoke twice on the phone, in February and September, since Biden became US President.
During the meeting, which came at the request of the US, Chinese President Xi Jinping laid out three principles and four priorities for growing bilateral ties in the new era. In terms of principles, the two countries first need to respect each other's social systems and development paths, respect each other's core interests and major concerns, and respect each other's right to development. They also need to treat each other as equals, keep differences under control, and seek common ground while reserving differences. The other two principles include peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation.
Xi demonstrated Beijing's "high-minded manner and full confidence in pushing Washington to correct mistakes that have led the bilateral relationship to deviate in recent years", Chinese experts said. Beijing drew up several red lines not only on matters related to sovereignty like the Taiwan question but also those concerning its social system and development path. After the struggles in recent years, China is now trying to push the US to correct and reset its problematic policy toward China, and this is China's new diplomatic stance "from the position of the strength" and "on a fair and equal basis," experts said.
There were major differences in Chinese and US readouts following the virtual meeting. In a shorter statement from the White House, compared to the nearly 4,000-word Chinese statement, Biden recognized the importance of managing strategic risks as well as "the need for common-sense guardrails to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict." Chinese top leader drew up several red lines for the US not only concerning sovereignty-related matters like the Taiwan question, but also on China's social system and development path, with Biden reiterating that the US does not seek to change China's system, the revitalization of its alliances is not anti-China, and the US has no intention to have a conflict with China.
The Biden administration announced 06 December 2021 a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. No government officials will attend. US athletes will still be allowed to compete. The Biden administration decided on a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Games because of the human rights situation in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and other issues.
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