China will attempt to manipulate Joe Biden into a more acquiescent foreign policy toward Beijing.
The first plank of Xi Jinping’s strategy will be to offer Biden an immediate improvement in relations without cost to Washington. Xi’s intent will be to play to the Biden administration’s multilateral instincts, reinforcing its hopes that China can be handled without constant tensions. To that end, I would expect China to increase U.S. imports very early in the Biden administration, play up its fallacious climate change commitments, and offer new dialogue on problems such as intellectual property rights and tensions in the South China Sea.
This outreach will be utterly disingenuous in quality.
What Xi really wants is a respite to the Trump administration’s diplomatic, economic, and security-centered pressure campaign. He’ll hope that by giving Biden some easy wins and the perception of reduced global tensions, Biden will reduce U.S. pressure on Beijing’s core interests. Xi knows that if Biden even hints at making moves in China’s favor, here, America’s European allies will quickly adopt their own newly concessionary stances toward Beijing. It’s worth noting that Xi attempted a similar strategy toward President Trump during his first year in office. Seeking to earn Trump’s amenability by playing to his ego, Xi hosted the president with an extravagant state visit. It worked. At least for a time.
Beyond the pleasant words and early gifts, China’s top priorities with Biden will be twofold.
First, Biden’s tacit acceptance of escalating Chinese intellectual property theft. Xi recently prioritized the development of a domestic technology industry. But because Beijing lacks patience and respect for the rule of law, its technology effort will necessarily entail increased intellectual property theft. Yes, over time, China aims to relocate intellectual property chains to its own territory, but for at least the next decade, America will dominate the People’s Liberation Army’s cyber gun sights. If the Biden administration responds to this aggression by further limiting China’s open access to new technology, and escalates U.S. cyberretaliation, Xi will have a problem. Beijing will thus be desperate to earn political space to thieve.
China’s second interest is a reduced U.S. military presence in the Indo-Pacific region and less U.S. pressure on allies to support these efforts. Beijing has been alarmed by the increasingly close security relationship between the United States, Australia, India, and Japan. These concerns have taken on added importance in the context of long-overdue European moves to support the international maritime law in the South China Sea. Regardless, China will challenge the Biden administration to live up to its oft-stated commitment to allies. Australia, for example, is now suffering under an overt Chinese trade war. If Biden adopts President Barack Obama’s China strategy and preferences appeasement in place of resolution, Xi will find inspiration to cajole America’s partners more aggressively into a concessionary policy posture. This need not be inevitable. For all its flaws, the U.S. is a natural ally to nations across the world. In contrast, China lacks natural allies and global trust.
Where does this leave us?
Well, as the presumptive president-elect moves to form his national security cabinet, he must have China foremost on his mind. If Biden appoints Susan Rice as secretary of state, for example, or returns Ben Rhodes to a senior White House position, China will be elated. Both those officials were renowned in the intelligence community and Pentagon for their appeasement of Beijing and their insincerity about challenging the Communist Party’s epidemic of human rights violations. Considering his character and China’s increasing readiness for war, Jim Mattis’s return to cabinet service would be most welcome.
However, the basic point for Biden is that Xi is not to be trusted. For all his smiles, Xi has no intention of being an American partner. The course for this new Mao is set and centers on replacing the U.S.-led international order with an authoritarian feudal order ruled from Beijing.
