After the cold war, Trump stoked the two countries
What does Trump or Biden win in the US elections mean for China?
The American and Chinese leaders are always at odds with Getty Images
Biden is likely to wage more organized pressure on China than Trump if he wins the election.
A.F.B.
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Shortly after US President Donald Trump took office in Washington, a new "cold war" began between China and America, at least according to the hawks in Washington, to last nearly four years, represented by Trump imposing tariffs and making threats to Beijing on Twitter », What increased the geopolitical fault lines between the two countries and paved the way for a competition between the great powers, which may be the dominant feature in the coming decades.
On a host of global issues, China is the favorite evil of the White House, as Washington views its trade tactics as unfair and double-faced, describes its government as an incubator of a hideous epidemic, and its technology companies are Trojan horses, and denounces its crackdown on ethnic minorities in Xinjiang and pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong.
In the past decade, Chinese President Xi Jinping has taken his country in a more obvious repressive direction, by purging his political rivals, squeezing the already narrow space of civil society, and tightening Beijing's grip on its troubled surroundings.
In international forums, Xi presents his nation as a stakeholder, responsible in the global system.
But at home, there is an emerging vanguard of influential Chinese intellectuals, rejecting liberal ideas and advocating a clearer ideology of Chinese power.
Trump and China
During the election campaign, Trump insists, again and again, that he will be the toughest candidate on China.
His rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, links an earlier era of Western recklessness, as top US politicians and their corporate counterparts eagerly sought to integrate communist China into the global economy.
From the White House’s perspective, that phase of globalization has weakened US industrialization and is generally responsible for the country's economic problems.
Trump has spent the past few years claiming to be correcting this imbalance, unleashing a trade war on Beijing, in which both sides impose protectionist duties on the other's goods.
An initial deal reached between US and Chinese negotiators in January saw some of those tariffs be lifted, but did little to calm hostilities.
America's large trade deficit with China - which Trump pledged to cut dramatically in 2016 - has not budged after four years.
Tensions are rising
All the while, tensions are running high on other fronts.
Trump and his supporters, especially Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, heightened the sense of an ideological clash with Beijing, describing China in his speeches as the greatest enemy of the new era, and describing it as a rival force bent on "Marxist hegemony."
Republicans and Democrats sought to punish China for its crackdowns in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, with sanctions.
And it achieved a degree of success, as the Trump administration persuaded a number of European countries to keep the Chinese tech giant Huawei at a distance.
In a recent statement, a US intelligence official indicated that China might want Trump to lose the election, due to the "inappropriate" nature of his style of government.
But Trump could not convince Xi to change course.
“Despite the pressure on Beijing, by imposing punitive policies that we have not seen in 40 years in official relations between the two countries, under either Republican or Democratic administrations, Trump has - in some ways - given something an opportunity to appear on the world stage and defend his domestic policy “As reported by the two journalists: Jerry Shih and Eva Doe, of the Washington Post.
"Xi was able to blame America for the slowdown in the economy and popular disillusionment with the Chinese Communist Party, while portraying himself as an advocate against foreign bullying," they add.
The director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, Paul Hanley, told the Financial Times that the Trump administration “highlighted the problems we face with China, but it did not try to solve these problems. I cannot say what its goal is, it is more than just an attitude and not.” Politics, it is more than an emotion. It is not good for the US national security to have this kind of policy.
Biden and China
Biden brags about his experience during his meeting with Xi, when he was vice president, but his aides assert that Biden's presumed administration could take a tough - and possibly tougher - stance on Beijing.
This, too, is a reflection of the shifting bipartisan consensus in Washington.
"I think there is widespread recognition in the Democratic Party that Trump has been largely accurate in diagnosing China's predatory practices," Barack Obama's chief Asia official, Kurt Campbell, told the Wall Street Journal.
Biden says he will focus on human rights and democratic values, to an extent that Trump has never done.
In China, many experts fear Biden will replace Trump in his aggressive dealings with China.
"If Biden is elected, I think this may be more dangerous for China, because he will work with US allies to target China, while Trump is destroying US alliances," former Chinese trade negotiator Zhou Xiaoming said in an article on Bloomberg News. Four current Chinese officials also expressed this same feeling.
"Biden will make this hard-line US stance on China more effective and efficient, and he may resort to more sophisticated and coordinated tactics against China," said Cheng Xiaohi, professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, told the New York Times.
assumption
The primary assumption here is that the White House, under Biden, will be better able to cement alliances with other Asian powers.
But the rest of Asia is not unanimous on this, as diplomats have learned a bitter experience from Trump's hostility to Beijing, and they fear a return to the elusive policies of the Obama era.
And that era appears to be over, regardless of who wins.
"We are on the road to an exacerbation of the Sino-American conflict ... with Biden or Trump," Bruno Massais, a former Portuguese politician and author of "Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order," told Today World View, among other books.
And China's problems are not limited to who will occupy the White House.
A new poll, conducted by the Pew Research Center, has revealed unfavorable views of China in many countries, partly due to China's role in the Coronavirus crisis, and also on a larger scale in response to Beijing's bullying, increasing behavior in different parts of the world.
"You cannot take the reins of global power through softness," says Masais.
But he added, "China has lost many hearts and minds over the past few years, and perhaps more than the United States."
Despite the pressure on Beijing, through imposing punitive policies, which we have not seen in 40 years, in official relations between the two countries, under either Republican or Democratic administrations, Trump - in some ways - gave Xi an opportunity to appear on the world stage and defend his policy Interior.
On a host of global issues, China is the favorite evil of the White House, as Washington views its trade tactics as unfair and double-faced, describes its government as an incubator of a hideous pandemic, and its technology companies are Trojans, and denounces its crackdown on ethnic minorities in Xinjiang and pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong.
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