The United States and China have fallen to their lowest point in decades amid a series of conflicts over the pandemic, technology, trade, security and espionage of the coronavirus.
Despite discord on so many other fronts, both sides criticize Beijing’s industry record and its position towards Hong Kong, Taiwan, and ethnic minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang, where the ruling Communist Party has arrested Muslims in political re-education camps.
The American public is also negative. Two-thirds of respondents in March through the Pew Research Center had “unfavorable opinions” about China, the highest since Pew began running in 2005.
Biden “would be savage” if he tried to downplay the judicial cases opposed to Beijing, said Derek Scissors of the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington tank.
Chinese leaders have been quieter about this election than in the 2016 presidential race, when they favored Trump over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and despised Clinton for implementing then-President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, which included tensions over human rights in Beijing. The public symbol of Trump’s good publicity reseded in the Chinese public.
But a Biden presidency could repair a more predictable date following the clashes of Trump’s tariff war and its influence in India, perceived as a strategic rival, and with Southeast Asian countries, with which Beijing has a series of territorial disputes, according to Chinese analysts. .
At least Biden’s policies “will be as emotional and ridiculous as Trump’s,” said Yu Wanli, a professor of foreign affairs at Beijing University of Languages and Culture.
“Democrats seem less militant, so they can be more careful to save even limited military conflicts and pay more attention to crisis control communication with China,” said Shi Yinhong of Renmin University in Beijing, one of the country’s leading foreign affairs experts. .
Biden, Obama’s vice president in 2009-2017, leads the polls, but Trump can win if he attracts enough electorate to key states, adding Florida. Trump achieved similar turmoil in 2016 when he lost the popular vote but won in enough states to get the 270 votes required for the Electoral College that makes the election decision.
U. S. intelligence officials believe Chinese leaders do not need Trump’s re-election, according to William Evanina, the most sensible counterintelligence officer, who did not directly accuse China of seeking to interfere in the election or help Biden.
Trump has shaken Chinese leaders by raising Chinese export price lists in 2018 after court cases that Beijing is stealing or pressuring corporations to sell the generation. The White House has pressured its allies to exclude Huawei, China’s leading global generation brand, from the next generation Telecommunications Networks for security reasons. Huawei’s parts and generation have been cut to the United States, threatening to paralyze its global sales.
Trump seeks to save Chinese U. S. social media corporations, raising concerns about collecting too much non-public data about Americans. The White House is pressuring video service TikTok to sell its business in the United States and is looking to prevent companies from having to deal with WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging service.
U. S. corporations and trading partners have criticized Trump’s tariff war, which has provoked Chinese retaliation that has harmed farmers and workers in American factories, but court cases that China is stealing generations and violating its commitments to open the market are widely shared. France, Germany, South Korea and governments as allies opposed to Washington, but all refused.
Tariff increases on Chinese products “would only be phased out with Biden,” said Michael Hirson of Eurasia Group, a study firm, in a report.
Trump’s price lists were imposed to inspire brands to move jobs to the United States, a cause long championed by Democrats.
Other governments concerned about China’s strategic ambitions are also holding back their generation’s corporations for security reasons.
This week, Swedish regulators banned huawei device phone operators and their small Chinese rival ZTE from building high-speed wireless networks after a security official rated China as one of the country’s biggest threats.
In their debates, presidential and vice presidential applicants have accused others of being useless or not difficult enough with China. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have accused Biden of giving China a loose path as Obama’s vice president. Biden’s vice president, Senator Kamala Harris, called the Trump industry war a failure.
Biden would try to resume cooperation with Beijing on climate change, North Korea, Iran, and the coronavirus, Hirson wrote, but said Biden would face “a broad U. S. consensus that Trump’s pre-Trump technique of involving China has failed or is no longer appropriate. .
What is most likely is a “more contentious relationship” in which either party is experiencing a crisis in Taiwan or the South China Sea, he said.
The Beijing army’s unease and strategic ambitions are widespread among U. S. and Washington allies. Army officers say Beijing is a developing threat. This feeling will be replaced under a new management.
“Biden is a challenge for China because its management would make China respect human rights, and its stated technique of running with allies to coerce China can happen and complicate China’s progress,” said Robert Sutter, Chinese policy expert at George Washington University. .
Elizabeth Economy, principal investigator at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said Biden could simply reaffirm America’s global leadership to pressure China to maintain its rhetoric on issues such as climate change and global health.
In 2016, Trump combined attacks on China’s industry record with a compliment to President Xi Jinping, who has no mandate restrictions as leader of the ruling party, army chief, and president, which has raised hopes in Beijing that Trump may be open to achieving it. Agreements.
Some members of the Chinese public are still in Favor of Trump because they believe it facilitates China’s rise to global leadership by “guiding America along the way,” Yu said of Beijing University of Languages and Culture.
Trump’s disinterest in human rights, complaints from NATO allies, and the disengagement of the World Trade Organization and the World Health Organization are noticed as American leaders.
Meanwhile, Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his demonstration of U. S. tensions over elegance and race were “mere gifts” to xi’s government, Economy said.
American disorders allow Xi to paint China’s single-party formula as something bigger than the messy Western democracy. State-controlled media forgets or dismisses court cases over the suppression of minority teams and other issues.
But still, Chinese nationalists say Trump is seeking to block China’s rise to its legitimate prestige as a world leader, and Beijing is frustrated by Trump’s abrupt policy changes.
“At one point, Trump’s management may be completely ineffective, but it’s also very likely to be unstable, and the Communist Party attaches wonderful importance to stability,” Scissors said.
Chinese leaders would possibly see Biden as more flexible even if the disorders don’t change, said June Teufel Dreyer, an expert in Chinese politics at the University of Miami.
“By reversing the old cliché, they prefer Satan who does not know the Satan they know,” Dreyer said.
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