The Wall Street Journal recently reported, citing Chinese officials, that Beijing plans to send top diplomat Yang Jiechi to Washington shortly after President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in to discuss cooperation between China and the United States.
The article said China hopes to ease trade relations with the U.S. and, in the short term, get the U.S. to lift tariffs imposed on China by the Trump administration in the trade war.
To change the trade imbalance between the U.S. and China, the Trump administration currently maintains tariffs on about $370 billion of Chinese goods to the U.S.
Advisers to President-elect Joe Biden say the tariffs will not be lifted anytime soon and that Biden plans to analyze the impact of the tariffs on the U.S. economy and consult with allies before taking action.
Biden’s team has not yet committed to new U.S.-China negotiations. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s nominated national security adviser, said it’s another thing Biden will have to discuss with allies first and that “he’s not going to lock himself into a particular approach.”
Pictured is Biden’s nominee for national security adviser Jake Sullivan (Jake Sullivan).
Outsiders Doubt Biden’s Talks With Communist China Suspect Beijing Biding Its Time
Business groups in the U.S. that oppose tariff increases have called for Biden to negotiate with the Chinese side and seek concessions from them. Business groups such as The Business Roundtable, an association of major U.S. companies, have said they hope Biden will lift tariffs on China in exchange for concessions on reducing subsidies to Chinese companies and predatory behavior by state-owned enterprises. These large companies are traditional allies of the Chinese Communist Party in Washington.
But there are doubts about Biden making another trade deal with the Chinese. Because after the Trump-era U.S.-China trade talks, there are questions about the Chinese Communist government’s willingness to make the necessary changes, which are often more likely to be a means for the Communist Party to trap its Western rivals in negotiations.
Instead, Beijing seems more willing to wait and bide its time. Shi Yinhong, a professor at the School of International Relations at Renmin University of China and a counsellor at the State Council, told China Daily that sooner or later Biden will launch renegotiations of the U.S.-China trade deal because the current agreement is unrealistic. He was referring to the procurement targets promised by the Chinese side.
Biden has worked with Beijing on the financial crisis and climate and wants to continue
Washington has worked with Beijing on issues such as the global financial crisis and climate, as shown by its policy of cooperation with China during the Obama administration and Biden’s past tenure as vice president. While some advisers who worked with Biden in the Obama administration are now changing their tune and saying that the era of U.S.-China engagement is over, they still expect some help from Beijing on climate change and other Biden priorities.
Biden’s policy toward China may not remain static. Some of Biden’s advisers have already indicated that the new administration may be divided on human rights issues with China, as in the early days of the Bill Clinton administration, which focused on human rights with China; but then Clinton stopped pressuring the Communist Party on human rights issues and focused on building U.S.-China economic and trade relations.
When Biden takes office, he will need to decide soon how far he will go in pressuring the Chinese Communist Party on the widespread suppression of civil liberties in Hong Kong. In interviews during and after the presidential campaign, senior Biden advisers said that the centerpiece of Biden’s China policy would be the creation of a “democratic state summit” that would seek to build a clear alternative to Beijing’s authoritarian rule.
The Chinese Communist Party has long drawn in and controlled multilateral rules
In the U.S.-China relationship, for example, on the economic and political fronts, Biden is proposing a multilateral cooperative solution. But in terms of the external environment, Biden’s policy will face many realistic constraints.
For example: Biden’s intention to join Western democracies to put extensive pressure on Beijing when he takes office just runs into Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping‘s idea of multilateral development. The Chinese Communist Party has been busy in recent years pulling traditional U.S. allies into China’s economic circle.
In addition, the Chinese Communist authorities are pursuing its own multilateral agenda. In the 20 years since the United States helped the CCP join the World Trade Organization (WTO), the CCP has been increasing its efforts to work through the WTO. And several international organizations, such as the United Nations, have become key venues for the Communist Party to openly seize power.
“If you control the rules, you control the game,” said an official with knowledge of the CCP leadership’s thinking, as quoted in the China Daily report.
Given the appeal of China’s massive market, Biden is also having a hard time convincing allies to unite against the CCP at this point. For example: China and the European Union just recently reached an investment agreement.
Should Biden veto Trump’s policy to follow the CCP into the CPTPP
Recently, Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping said he would “actively consider” joining the Obama administration’s 11-nation Asia-Pacific trade agreement, the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
An earlier version of the agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, was strongly disapproved of by even U.S. labor unions and Democratic lawmakers.
In 2017, President Trump even decided to withdraw from the TPP, saying that the agreement would kill American jobs.
Biden said it would need to be renegotiated before he would consider joining.
But the move would be quite ironic, as it would mean that an agreement first developed by U.S. negotiators under Obama, then rejected by President Trump, and finally joined during Biden’s presidency, has come full circle and is back to square one again.
At the same time, Beijing can be expected to take advantage of it.
For Biden, reformulating U.S. policy toward China means repudiating the practices of the current Trump administration.
The Trump presidency has been confronting the Chinese Communist Party head-on on a number of issues and has changed the tone of U.S.-China relations. At the same time, Trump has promoted a growing consensus in Congress and among the public that China under the Communist Party is not only a competitor but also a threat to U.S. global leadership.
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