With a new administration in place, Biden‘s China Policy team is also taking its place. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Biden has equipped his China policy team with a strong group of people who have deep ties to each other but different goals. The way they work together could determine whether the new administration’s China policy is unified or divided, with the latter scenario threatening to give China an opportunity to take advantage of it.
The article notes that Biden’s China policy team is full of rivals. While these top officials have longstanding ties to each other, they have their own distinct goals on climate, human rights and trade policy. How they work together determines whether the Biden Administration‘s China policy will be unified or fraught and easily exploited.
For example, John Kerry, a former secretary of state and climate change envoy who is also a member of the White House National Security Council, and Kurt Campbell, the NSC’s “Indo-Pacific coordinator” known as the “czar of Asia” and former assistant secretary of state for Asia and the Pacific, have been at odds with each other over their views on China. Kurt Campbell, the NSC’s “Indo-Pacific coordinator” who was the State Department’s assistant secretary for Asia-Pacific, has pursued a completely different course on China. Kerry, who is pushing for an international climate agreement, favors cooperation with China, while Campbell wants to push back hard against China.
Both they and their current leaders, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, served in former President Barack Obama’s administration, and, in addition, Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, is now chairman of Biden’s White House Interior Committee. Some of Rice’s former colleagues say she may also weigh in on some China issues.
Sullivan now needs to integrate the views of those people and with the heads of the Treasury, State, Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative offices. The difficulty is that the views of this group are often divided.
According to the article, the U.S. strategy is still being developed and sorted out, but the focus is on two fronts: investing heavily in advanced technology at Home and recruiting united democratic allies to build what Biden calls a “united front” against China. This includes consulting with allies before deciding whether to lift tariffs on China.
But even some of Biden’s allies expect the fissures in Biden’s team to come to the fore on issues such as human rights or industrial policy, just as they have pitted economic officials against national security officials in previous U.S. administrations.
The Wall Street Journal said that within the Biden administration, the focus of attention is largely on whether Kerry and Campbell can work as a team and which of them will try to lead relations with China.
Kerry, 77, who reports directly to Biden, worked with him for 24 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Those who have worked with Kerry say he is not constrained by bureaucracy: His instinct is to “get on the plane and make a final deal with China right away.
Campbell, 64, has spent the last several decades studying Chinese policy and has longstanding ties to Chinese officials. Together with Sullivan, he helped design the Obama administration’s “turn to China” strategy with China.
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