President Biden cautioned Donald Trump on Thanksgiving Day and hoped his soon-to-be successor’s announcement the previous day to increase import tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China is misplaced and will be counterproductive. Speaking of tariffs on China, the mainland scholars see Biden’s latest remarks a continuation of the outgoing president’s recent efforts to entrap the president-elect in his China policy.
The US President-elect Donald Trump vowed to charge China with an additional 10% tariffs on top of additional tariffs on products coming into the US, arguing Beijing wasn’t doing enough to stop the flow of illicit drugs. Reacting to this, President Biden told reporters on Thanksgiving Day he hopes “President -elect Donald Trump ‘rethinks’ his ‘Day 1 Proposal,’ calling it counterproductive.” Finding Biden’s reaction most bizarre – for all through his presidency Biden not only retained Trump’s increased tariffs on China but he (Biden) actually further intensified them – many analysts in China see the outgoing president trying to dig holes for Trump 2.0 administration’s China policy.
Scholars in China further point out, since exiting the presidential race and in particular following the resounding victory of Trump-led Republican Party in the November 5 election, Biden himself and top officials in his administration have been making “reconciliatory” statements on US-China economic and trade relationship. For example, nothing better expresses the shift in Biden’s bittersweet “swan song” in the US attitude on China than his fourth – in Biden’s own words, his last and final – speech last September at the UNGA in as many years as president of the United States.
“We seek to responsibly manage the competition with China so it does not veer into conflict,” Biden told the packed assembly. Soon after, came the White House national security advisor John Kirby’s “extraordinary” statement, which some thought perhaps even overstepped the brief on China. Kirby, a retired US navy rear admiral, surprised many when he nearly vouched for President Xi Jinping’s sincerity. Kirby was applauding the Chinese government fulfilling the commitment to help Washington address the issue of rising number of deaths in America due to fentanyl and other synthetic drugs. A promise President Xi Jinping had made to President Biden when the latter sought the help of the former in November last year in California.
Following Biden’s “friendly” remarks on China at the UN, Kirby had said:” It is apparent to us that Xi is sincere. There is no reason for this [US-China] relationship to fall into conflict on anything.” Finding a definite link between President Biden displaying “friendly” attitude towards China at the UN and then Biden congratulating Xi on China’s 75th anniversary on October 1 – China’s National Day, and then again not wanting to miss the chance to meet Xi at the APEC summit in Lima, Peru in mid-November – all these are being viewed in China as Biden’s last and well-calculated moves to “manage and stabilize frosty US-China ties during the transition period.”
Especially on the Xi-Biden meeting on the sidelines of the APEC leader’s meet in Peru, the IR pundits overseas have viewed the final “sit-down” between the Chinese and US leaders as Xi aiming to convey a clear message to Trump. In the words of Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Centre in Washington, “Beijing would want to send a message to the next president that the Chinese leadership hoped to maintain that stable relationship with the next administration.” Likewise, while speaking to the South China Morning Post, Asia Society Policy’s China specialist Philippe Le Corre too agreed: “In Beijing, expectations for changes under a Trump administration are minimal…the [Biden-Xi] meetings could help ease concerns about the US-China feud.”
In China, in contrast, strategic affairs analysts are interpreting Biden’s anxiety to meet with Xi Jinping before leaving office as tantamount to “digging holes” for Trump’s China policy (给特朗普挖了大坑). Recall the US national security advisor Jake Sullivan’s visit to China in August-end, when the media in China and in the West was agog with speculations that the high-profile visit was to explore the prospect of a potential visit to China by President Biden before January 2025.
However, if Chinese commenters were to be believed, the idea of Xi-Biden sit-down in Beijing, especially as Biden was no longer seeking another term and the US election being not far away, did not appeal to the Chinese authorities. Besides, as underscored in the Chinese article cited above, most analysts in China at the time believed even if Xi Jinping invited and hosted Biden in Beijing the impact of such a summit on the bilateral ties will be minimal.
Such an understanding in Beijing was in stark opposition to those in the West advocating for a summit meeting between the two leaders. Emphasizing that establishing communication channels between China and the US at the senior level, especially during the Biden years, have not at all produced tangible results. Shi Yinhong, a former Chinese state counsellor (2011-2021) and an influential foreign policy expert who advises Chinese policymakers on China-US relations and on security issues, recently observed: “Since the 2013 Obama-Xi summit in Sunnylands, California, Sino-US interactions have been frequent, including in-person meetings at the highest level. However, Sino-US relations have consistently deteriorated over the past 11 years.”
It is precisely this failure of Biden, or as some in China say the Biden administration’s “mission” to escalate the deterioration in US-China relations, the outgoing Biden administration began to “dig holes” for Trump’s China policy. This further explains why scholars in China are convinced that Biden is bent upon ensuring “with Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, Sino-US relations must continue to face more intense challenges.” In fact, as perceived in Beijing, it is normal in the US political tradition for the Republicans and Democrats to dig holes for each other when exiting the White House. Trump too attempted to dig a hole by causing an “attack on Capitol Hill” and leaving the Biden administration in a mess four years ago.
No wonder a section of Chinese media has given rather prominent coverage to the outcome of the Biden-Trump “smooth transition” meeting in the White House on November 13. Chinese state-owned digital news platform, guancha.cn, carried a loud headline, saying “After Biden and Trump met, Sullivan claimed competition with China should be top priority for the next administration.” In comparison, the media in the US and West focused on Ukraine and the Middle East as top agenda in Biden-Trump talks on smooth transfer of power, held in the White House last Wednesday. In Britain, The Independent newspaper chose to highlight on Biden resuming a tradition that Trump broke four years ago.
Additionally, the leftist intelligentsia in China too sees the Biden administrations’ two anti-China moves while the Biden presidency comes to an end as part of the ongoing “digging holes” for the incoming Trump administration. The two moves are namely a) the US has banned Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) – the world’s largest chip contract manufacturer – from selling 7 nanometer and lower chips to Chinese customers – especially Huawei; b) the second last-minute move is to force the EU to launch a trade war against China – especially, the tariffs on Chinese EVs.
Within 24 hours of the ban on TSMC on November 10, an article in one of the largest leftist digital news and current affairs platforms accused the Biden administration of playing mischief with the new Trump administration. “The United States is hoping [the moves] to further escalate trade war in the hope of maintaining its upper hand in economic and trade status,” the article said. Also, when addressing reporters immediately following the Biden-Trump meeting Jake Sullivan clearly indicated, “White House officials are making it clear to the Trump team that the US-China relationship is ‘paramount priority’ for the incoming administration.”
In summary, indeed it is understandable why analysts in both Washington and Beijing took keen interest in the outcome of what was being anticipated to be a highly consequential Biden-Xi meeting in Lima. Remember, if a Biden-Xi sit-down ended on a positive note, it would be one of the last chances for Biden to shake hands with the Chinese leader whom the US president had called “dictator” twice but never a friend. No wonder, around the same time as the Biden-Xi tête-à-tête the widely circulated Chinese digital newspaper guancha.cn published Sullivan’s picture bold and big, under the caption: 沙利文称 特朗政府首要任务是？ “中国！”or “Sullivan claims ‘China’ is the Trump administration’s top priority!”
