The next president will likely preside over one of the most consequential periods in the nation’s relations with communist China, an adversary that
has the intention and capacity to displace the current U.S.-led world order.
Eight in 10 Americans view China unfavorably, according to a Pew Research Center
report released in July.
Washington also has a consensus that the Chinese regime poses a
threat as it closes the power gap with the United States in military, diplomatic, and technological domains.
The current approach to China began with former President Donald Trump. Identifying China as a “strategic competitor,” the Trump administration took a new approach to U.S.–China relations. It imposed broad tariffs on Chinese goods, controlled Chinese access to American semiconductor technology, and pivoted national security strategy from the Middle East to China and Russia.
The Biden administration continued many of the same policies, and Washington’s China policy will likely continue to be hawkish. However, the two candidates will also have distinct approaches, owing to their personal differences and depending on whom they appoint to key positions.
Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump is broadly expected to resume his China policies in the first term.
Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris has indicated no sign of divergence from the Biden administration’s China policies.
Trade
The two candidates agree on controlling strategic goods and technologies, investing in innovation, re-shoring supply chains, and combating Beijing’s unfair trade practices.The aim is to ensure “America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century,” Harris has
said repeatedly.
Last month, the Biden administration
finalized its tariffs, retaining all Trump-era rates and sharply increasing them on selected critical technology and minerals.
During a speech on the economy in Pittsburgh on Sept. 25, the vice president
vowed, “I will never hesitate to take swift and strong measures when China undermines the rules of the road at the expense of our workers, our communities, and our companies.”
Meanwhile, the Trump-centered Republican platform also
pledges to revoke China’s permanent normal trade relations status, which grants it free trade benefits with the United States; phase out imports of
essential goods that include electronics, steel, and pharmaceuticals; and stop China from buying American real estate and industries.
Dennis Wilder, a former national security and intelligence officer who held several senior roles in the Bush and Obama administrations, believes Trump’s threat of higher tariffs is merely a negotiation tool to achieve a trade deal similar to the phase one U.S.–China
trade deal signed in 2020.
The CMA CGM White Shark cargo ship prepares to dock at Port Miami as the United States and China continue their trade war, in Miami Beach on May 16, 2019. China was one of the top trading countries in 2018 at the port. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Stephen Ezell, a vice president at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation think tank, believes Trump will take the pledges in the Republican platform seriously, particularly revoking China’s permanent normal trade relations status, because Beijing has failed to comply with its commitments as a member of the World Trade Organization, he told The Epoch Times.
Beijing did
not fulfill its pledge in the phase one deal to buy an additional $200 billion in U.S. products over two years. During a meeting with farmers in Pennsylvania’s Smithton, a city near Pittsburgh, on Sept. 23, Trump said, if reelected, his first call would be to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, asking him to honor the deal.
During the final months of his term, Trump raised the idea of separating the United States and Chinese economies, known as decoupling. His former trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, a rumored candidate for the next secretary of the Treasury, advocates the same approach.
Harris and her Democratic Party have a different
view; she believes in derisking, not decoupling.
James Lewis, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said decoupling is already happening.
As to whether a future Harris administration would differ from Biden’s approach, Lewis told The Epoch Times that he would watch the pace of decoupling and the measures adopted to reinforce it.
Security
Despite a growing consensus in Washington on the need to counter the Chinese regime’s aggressive actions, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, differences remain on how to avoid military conflicts.Trump emphasizes maintaining peace by showing military strength. During his term, he focused on modernizing nuclear weapons and stopped the trend of cuts to the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
A 2018 nuclear policy document
listed that one of the roles of nuclear weapons was for “hedging against an uncertain future.” The Biden administration
dropped this language in its 2022 update.
President Joe Biden’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review also canceled the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile program for cost reasons. However, Congress
continued funding the program, although it was not included in the Biden administration’s defense budget requests. According to its proponents, the program
enhances the credibility of U.S. deterrence.
US Navy F-18 Super Hornets and crew are on the flight deck of the USS Aircraft Carrier Nimitz during a U.S.–South Korea maritime exercise off the coast of South Korea on March 27, 2023. Jeon Heon-Kyun - Pool/Getty Images
A YouGov survey in June
found that Trump supporters are more likely than Biden supporters to say America is safer because of its nuclear arsenal.
During a debate on the defense funding bill in 2020, then-Sen. Harris (D-Calif.) supported cutting the budget and said, “I unequivocally agree with the goal of reducing the defense budget and redirecting funding to communities in need.”
In May, Harris
said the United States’s air and space supremacy is essential to ensuring global peace and security, and the Biden administration has kept defense spending steady.
Trump started the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, which Biden continued. Both parties agree that the Indo-Pacific region is the United States’s primary theater. However, Trump and Harris may differ on the balance between the imminent dangers in the Russia–Ukraine and Israel–Hamas regional wars and the tense South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.
Ivan Kanapathy, a senior vice president at advisory firm Beacon Global Strategies and former senior national security official under the Trump administration, believes the European Union, which has a much larger economy than Russia, should handle the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war while the United States should focus more on China and North Korea.
Elbridge Colby, a former senior Pentagon official and a top contender for the national security adviser position in Trump’s second term,
shares this view.
In late September, Harris
reaffirmed the U.S. support for Ukraine as a way of “fulfilling our long-standing role of global leadership.” Earlier this year, in February, she
touted having “ invested heavily in our alliances and partnerships and created new ones to ensure peace and security” in the Indo-Pacific during the past three and half years.
The Biden administration has maintained that the Indo-Pacific is the “priority theater” for the United States. However, military assistance to Ukraine and Israel has strained the defense industry and led to an arms sales backlog to Taiwan of about $20 billion, the same as the island’s annual defense budget.
Biden has said several times that the United States would defend Taiwan if Beijing tried to annex the island by force. However, his officials walked back those statements each time, saying U.S. policy is deliberately vague on what it would do.
In September 2022, Harris
said the United States will “continue to oppose any unilateral change to the status quo” and “continue to support Taiwan’s self-defense, consistent with our long-standing policy.”
Trump has recently sparked controversy by saying
Taiwan should pay the United States for its defense.
Trump is also credited with forging closer U.S.–Taiwan relations, starting with his unprecedented phone conversation in 2016—the first such official call since 1960—with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who congratulated the U.S. president-elect.
A Chinese military helicopter flies over tourists at a viewing point over the Taiwan Strait, on Pingtan island, the closest point to Taiwan, in Fujian Province, China, on April 7, 2023. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images
Trump signed into law the
Taiwan Travel Act in 2018, which encouraged engagements between U.S. and Taiwan officials at all levels, and the
Taiwan Assurance Act in 2020, which ensured alignment of Taiwan guidelines in the State Department. During his term, several current U.S. cabinet-level officials visited the island nation.
In Smithton, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 23, Trump alluded to the possibility of getting into a war with China while speaking about protecting the U.S. steel industry.
“If we’re in a war—and we need army tanks, and we need ships, and we need other things that happen to be made of steel—what are we going to do? Go to China and get the steel?” he said.
“We’re fighting China, but ‘Would you mind selling us some steel?’ Think about it.”
According to the 2024 edition of the Lowy Institute’s
Asia Power Index—which ranks 27 states’ powers based on eight metrics, including military and economic capabilities—China’s power is plateauing at a level below that of the United States. However, for the first time since the index began in 2018, experts surveyed judged that China is better able to deploy rapidly and for a sustained period in the event of a conflict in Asia.
Fentanyl
Another sticky China-related issue is fentanyl overdose, the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45. The United States has lost half a million people to the drug in the past decade. A vast majority of the chemicals or precursors needed for fentanyl production are shipped from China to Mexico.
In January, the Biden administration relaunched a U.S.–China counternarcotics cooperation program. According to a State Department spokesperson, Chinese authorities
arrested one individual earlier this year in relation to U.S. charges brought in 2023. That remains the only known arrest made by Beijing as a result of the bilateral counternarcotics coordination with the United States.
On Sept. 1, China added seven fentanyl precursors under state control, which triggers limitations on purchases, sales, and exports.
Calling the drug a “scourge on our country,” Harris pledged last month without mentioning China, “As president, I will make it a top priority to disrupt the flow of fentanyl into the United States.”
An overview of global illicit drug pathways, shown during a press conference at the Department of Justice in Washington on Oct. 17, 2017. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
In Smithton, Trump said that if he were reelected, he would call Xi and ask the CCP leader to give death penalties to Chinese fentanyl dealers. According to Trump, while he was in office, he had a “handshake deal” with Xi on that issue.
Xi had previously promised Trump to rein in Chinese fentanyl traffickers and added more than 1,400 known fentanyl variations to the list of narcotics under Chinese state control in May 2019. However, the Trump administration saw no large-scale Chinese law enforcement actions to reinforce the regulation.
Engagement
While U.S.–China relations were more confrontational under Trump, the Democratic platform
shows more willingness to engage with Beijing, advocating for a “tough but smart” approach to China.
Harris
shares Biden’s view of “responsibly managing this competition” via “high-level, open lines of communication” to avoid conflict or confrontations, according to national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
Alexander Gray, CEO of American Global Strategies and a former senior national security official under the Trump administration, said dialogue and discussions need to have an objective.
He told The Epoch Times that the CCP has “a well-known historical reputation for manipulating foreign interlocutors and using those types of engagements for propaganda purposes rather than having any agenda that’s constructive.”
According to Kanapathy’s observation, Biden cautiously continued his predecessor’s China policy for two years before his administration shifted to “a more accommodative posture with less emphasis on competitive actions.”
Lewis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies believes the current administration’s approach hinges upon an assessment of whether China has peaked. If it is believed that China has plateaued, he said, then U.S. policy responses can be more relaxed. If it is thought that China will continue getting stronger, then more pushback is needed, he said.
But this question is still an open debate, Lewis said, and has resulted in a “sort of gridlock in the White House under Biden on China’s strategy.”
People walk along a street at the Bund promenade in Shanghai on August 19, 2024. China is facing a number of problems such as an aging and declining population and spiraling debt, according to Lewis. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images
Lewis also pointed to the consensus that Chinese officials “fudge their numbers,” saying the pace of China’s economic growth is likely half of what Beijing claims it is.
However, he said the problems might be offset by Beijing’s “willingness to spend” and its deep research bench.
China has more than 6 million personnel to support Xi’s plan to develop new technology—such as batteries and solar energy—to achieve world dominance.
Human Rights
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have been vocal critics of human rights abuses in China.In 2020, Harris
told the Council on Foreign Relations that China’s “abysmal human rights record” must be prominently featured in U.S. policy toward the country.
Trump signed both bills into law.
While facing criticism for publicly praising Xi, Trump has also presided over several milestones in terms of Chinese human rights.
On its last day, the Trump administration
declared that the Chinese regime had committed ongoing “genocide against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang.”
Several Parliaments worldwide have backed such determination with non-binding votes, but Washington remains the only executive branch to do so.
Trump was also the first U.S. president to meet with a Falun Gong practitioner, along with other survivors of religious persecution from China and elsewhere. His administration
sanctioned those involved in “gross violations of human rights” by being “associated with particularly severe violations of religious freedom of Falun Gong practitioners.”
Yuhua Zhang, a Falun Gong practitioner, speaks with President Donald Trump during a meeting with survivors of religious persecution from 17 countries, in the Oval Office on July 17, 2019. Shealah Craighead/White House
The CCP perceives Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa—a spiritual practice that follows the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance—as one of the top threats to its rule, along with Taiwanese independence, Tibetan independence, Xinjiang “separatists,” and the Chinese democracy movement.
The Biden administration continued the policy, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken
imposing visa restrictions on another Chinese communist official for “arbitrary detention of Falun Gong practitioners for their spiritual beliefs.”
Andrew Thornebrooke contributed to this report.
