By Donald Menzel
U.S.-China relations have waxed and waned, reaching at times a “love-hate” relationship. Fast forward to 2016 and the unexpected election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States. President Trump was quick to recognize that China must be brought to heal in international trade and technology transfer. Within three months of assuming office, President Trump sat beside President Xi Jinping in Mar-a-Lago to convince him that future U.S.-China trade relations cannot be so one-sided. Mr. Trump’s self-proclaimed business savvy, along with his persuasive skills, so he believed, would turn the table. Four years later with personal diplomacy trashed, along with a blistering trade war grown into a worldwide affair, Trump left the White House with hat in hand, never to look back at the havoc he wrought.
Did U.S.-China relations move forward in the Trump years? Of course not. Did they move backward? Maybe, but U.S.-China relationships across a wide swath of issues are complicated and made ever so by the interdependency of the two economies and the blowback from globalization skeptics. One clear result from the Trump years and the emerging Biden era is that the past will not define the future.
Let’s take a closer look at what President Biden has done to reset U.S.-China relations — starting with the confrontational meeting between Chinese and American diplomats in Anchorage in March 2021. Ostensibly, the Anchorage event was a setback for U.S. China relations. It was certainly a collision between China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi and Secretary of State Antony Blinken who described the regime of Xi Jinping as a threat to global stability. Further, he criticized China’s repression in Hong Kong and the Xinjiang region. China’s Yang Jiechi responded with a 17-minute tirade, advising the United States to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world. Critics could certainly view the collision as a move backward, not forward in U.S.–China relations. Others called the exchange a “reset” in relations after the Trump administration’s confused and often contradictory treatment of China, including the encouragement of repression in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.
Now to the trade war. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai says that the Biden Administration is studying all available options for enforcing the trade agreement signed in January 2020. China committed to buying an additional U.S. $200 billion worth of American goods over the following two years compared with 2017 levels. Tai promises a “top-to-bottom” review of the trade policy toward China. Once the review is further along, Tai says, she will meet with her Chinese counterpart to discuss the trade agreement. Most observers regard the resumption of trade dialogue after a nine-month hiatus as a positive step forward.
Alas, the U.S. trade deficit with China shows no sign of decreasing. Indeed, it is growing. Through the first three months of 2021, the U.S. trade deficit totaled $212.8 billion, up 64.2% from the deficit during the same period last year, a time when the U.S. economy was essentially shut down by the coronavirus pandemic. Will the Biden Administration repeal the trade war sanctions from the Truman years? Not likely, but one can expect a targeted approach to balance trade and, if successful, would certainly be a step forward.
The downward spiral of U.S.-China relations is certainly concerning. President Biden says he expects competition, not confrontation. Further, he describes the relationship as “extreme competition without conflict.” No small accomplishment, is it? But here’s the possible surprise. Neither the U.S. nor China may even want a much-improved relationship. On the one hand, China shows few signs of slowing its technological prowess, including a determined effort to reduce its dependency on core technologies such as semiconductors. On the other hand, the U.S. appears to be drawing the line in the sand in criticizing China’s treatment of human rights abuse, aggressiveness in the South China sea and toward Taiwan, and suppression of dissidents in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet.
What then are we to conclude about U.S.-China relations moving forward or backward? Probably not much; rather, a more accurate description is that the relationship is moving sideways, with cooperation on some issues and disagreement on others.
Donald C. Menzel, Ph.D., is a Loveland resident. He studied political science at Penn State University.