Joe Biden pledged a more holistic approach to counter Chinese corporate influence
While Joe Biden has spent much of the campaign criticizing US President Donald Trump’s China policy, his own platform looks more like a shift in tactics than a reworking of strategy.
The former US vice president – a longtime member of a foreign policy establishment that advocated engagement with Beijing – moved with the rest of Washington to a more confrontational tone during Trump’s tenure, denouncing Xi Jinping as a ” thug ”. Still, the Democratic candidate faced a few questions about how he would run China more effectively than his Republican opponent.
What Biden has said so far indicates a more multilateral approach that places more emphasis on alliances and human rights, and less reliant on tariffs and arms sales. Here’s where it sits on some of the biggest flashpoints between the world‘s two largest economies:
Trade, prices
Biden scoffed at Trump’s January trade deal with Xi as a “low” and accused the president’s tariffs of accelerating the decline in American manufacturing. But he did not pledge to abandon the pact or remove tariffs – two key sources of leverage over China for the next administration.
“I will use the tariffs when they are needed, but the difference between me and Trump is that I will have a strategy – a plan – to use these tariffs to win, not just to simulate harshness.” – Biden, in a statement to the United Steelworkers in May
Biden launched a $ 400 billion Buy American plan to direct government purchases to domestically produced goods. He also pledged to “unite the economic might of democracies around the world to counter abusive economic practices” – which critics of China in places like Brussels and Tokyo have complained has not been possible in the part of Trump’s “America First” policy.
A major question is whether Biden will seek to join the Pacific Trade Pact that many Chinese hawks see as the best way to counter Beijing’s economic might before Trump pulls out as one of his first official actions. . Biden backed the deal – now known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership – under the administration of former President Barack Obama, but said during a Democratic primary debate the last year that he would insist on the renegotiation of the pacts.
TikTok, Huawei
Biden also pledged a more holistic approach to counter the influence of Chinese tech companies such as Huawei Technologies Co. and ByteDance Ltd., owner of TikTok, acknowledged a “real concern” about the way TikTok treats its data. some 100 million US users, while criticizing Trump for trying to make money from a deal to secure US control over the social network’s local activities.
“God only knows what they do with the information they get from here. So, as president, I’m going to take a very deep interest in it, I’m going to bring the cyber experts with me to give me what is the best solution to deal with it. “- Biden, during a campaign stopover in Duluth, Minnesota, in September
Biden said in February he supported the ban on the use of Huawei equipment in the United States, although he said little whether he would continue the Trump administration’s “Clean Network” program to convince allies to forgo Huawei products in critical communication networks. He said he would work with “other democracies” to develop global rules on cyber-theft, data privacy and artificial intelligence.
The former vice president has vowed to focus more on issues such as the theft of intellectual property that took precedence over agricultural purchases in Trump’s “phase one” trade deal. He promised new sanctions against Chinese companies that steal American technology and threatened to deny them access to the American market and financial system.
Rights, sanctions
Although the Trump administration has drawn increased attention to China’s human rights practices, these efforts have often been thwarted by reports praising the president for Xi’s radical approach. Biden promised a more cohesive message from the White House.
“I will put values back at the center of our foreign policy, including how we approach the US-China relationship.” – Biden, in a campaign statement in August
He vowed to “fully implement” Hong Kong’s human rights and democracy law signed by Trump last year and to meet with exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, if elected. Biden called China’s program of mass detention and re-education of the predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region “genocide” and called for an international effort to oppose the campaign.
The Democratic candidate said he would convene a “Summit for Democracy” to make new commitments to tackle corruption and authoritarianism and advance human rights. This would involve pressuring tech companies to commit to “ensuring that their algorithms and platforms do not empower the surveillance state, facilitating crackdowns in China and elsewhere.”
Defense, Taiwan
As vice president, Biden was a defender of Obama’s “pivot” to Asia. However, it is unlikely to replace Trump’s “Indo-Pacific strategy”, which aims to draw India into a larger coalition of democracies to help offset China’s regional weight.
On the contrary, Biden could seek to downplay the military component of the US engagement in Asia, which under Trump has prioritized arms sales. The party’s platform endorsed at the Democratic National Convention called for countering China “without resorting to self-destructive unilateral tariff wars or falling into the trap of a new cold war.”
“Democrats are committed to the Law on Relations with Taiwan and will continue to support a peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues in accordance with the wishes and best interests of the Taiwanese people,” the Democratic Party said in its program released in August.
It’s unclear how Biden would approach Taiwan, whose president Tsai Ing-wen has received unprecedented support from Washington as Trump stepped up his attacks on China. While Tsai’s ruling Progressive Democratic Party has more in common with Biden’s left-wing coalition on trade, environmental and social issues, the presidential candidate has advocated for decades “strategic ambiguity” aimed at downplaying the risk of direct conflict with China over Taiwan.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
