Let me post another Biden China policy take on here, copied from r/geopolitics:
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A Biden Administration will be overwhelmingly focused on domestic policy rather than foreign policy (stitching up COVID response, trying to rebuild the economy). Suffice to say, I don't think a Biden presidency will be a foreign policy-focused one.
Having said that, I will express my opinion on his potential China policy first:
Already said he would
. He literally let it out back in the summer, I don't care what excuses his advisors are making up, I don't really give credence to analysts saying "well he won't actually", the fact that he let that out 3 months ago when anti-China hysteria was still at its peak (its cooled down now somewhat) is quite telling.
The specifics are here:
“Some have said Trump’s stance is a good one to counter China’s influence,” said Garcia-Navarro. “Would you keep the tariffs?”
“No. Hey, look, who said Trump’s idea’s a good one?” said Biden. “Manufacturing has gone into a recession. Agriculture lost billions of dollars that taxpayers had to pay.”
He literally said, "
No, I would not keep the tariffs". You don't need to misconstrue Biden's position that much in hoping for a continued cold war approach against China.
Furthermore, you should give much more credence to Biden's actions, not his rhetoric.
Biden reportedly considering people like
Michael Bloomberg,
Jamie Dimon, and
Lael Brainard for top-level cabinet posts, like the Treasury. For China policy in particular, Biden, according to VOA, reportedly is considering former Obama Administration officials like
Susan Rice for Secretary of State, and other Obama-era officials like former Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, former ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, Deputy Director at the Center for a New American Security Ely Ratner, and former National Security Advisors Jake Sullivan and Thomas Donilon for his China policy.
For context, FP writes that this has been said about Susan Rice's potential candidacy for SecState under Biden:
"She was amongst those who thought the United States should deemphasise competition to get China’s cooperation on climate change, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of international relations."
And Lael Brainard is quite literally one of the most dovish officials in Washington when it comes to China, literally paving the way for China's ascendance into the WTO in 2001, as well as still opposing any action to designate China as a currency manipulator and supporting a quick end to the China trade war as recently as last year. Putting her in the position as Treasury secretary means she'll have immense influence over economic relations with China (i.e. expect decoupling and trade wars to end).
Bloomberg and Dimon both have quite a favorable view of China as well; Bloomberg quite literally said this when he was still running for
:
“When the public says ‘I can’t breathe the air’, Xi Jinping is not a dictator. He has to satisfy his constituents, or he’s not going to survive … The trouble is you can’t overnight move cement plants and power plants just outside the city that are polluting the air and you have to have their product. So some of it takes time.”
Whatever action Biden takes in terms of China policy, I'm near-certain their administration opposes a new Cold War or decoupling with China, based on what Biden has said and is doing. While it may not be a full return to Obama's passive China engagement policy, there certainly will be a reset in US-China relations. People are already writing this saying Trump has fundamentally changed US political elites' views on China; I fundamentally disagree. If Trump is capable of a major China policy shift in just these 4 years, there's nothing stopping Biden from shifting it towards the other direction (yes, the Senate is still probably to be controlled by Republicans, but the Senate doesn't control foreign policy, does it?)
