Biden has made a global push to pressure China. What will Trump do?

President Biden and his aides come to office with deep experience in trans-Atlantic affairs. But for four years they have also focused on the Pacific, where China is proving to be a dominant player. Their main effort: building an alliance against China.

President-elect Donald J. Trump has taken a different tack on China. He invited Chinese leader Xi Jinping to attend his inauguration on Monday. The two spoke on the phone on Friday, and Mr. Xi is sending China’s vice president, Han Zheng, to the ceremony, a departure from China’s tradition of having its embassy in Washington.

The latest move by the Biden administration to target China is in contrast. Mr. Biden called the leaders of Japan and the Philippines last Sunday to confirm three new defense systems he helped build. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken visited South Korea and Japan this month on his last official trip.

In the narrative, Mr. Biden and his aides present Mr. Trump with a competitive edge against China, the United States’ biggest rival.

Of all of Mr. Biden’s foreign policies, his approach to China may be seen by historians as one of continuity. His administration built its own system on the foundation of competition laid by Mr. Trump’s team and is now turning it around.

It is not clear what Mr. Trump will do about it. He favors the autocratic Mr. Xi, and sees China mainly through economic negotiations. Mr Trump’s billionaire advisers, including Elon Musk, want to maintain and expand trade deals with China.

But his top choices for foreign policy aides are more in line with Mr. Biden: They have argued that the United States must pressure China on many fronts, and use its defense and diplomatic tools. whole economy.

A first test will be whether Mr. Trump will enforce a ban on TikTok, the Chinese social media app popular with American youth.

Mr. Biden signed bipartisan legislation last year to ban TikTok on national security grounds unless its parent company, ByteDance, sold it to investors not tied to “foreign adversaries.” that’s it. ByteDance still owns TikTok, and the White House announced on Friday that it was up to Mr Trump to impose the ban. Mr Trump said on Saturday he might give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from the ban, and the company’s chief executive plans to attend the inauguration.

Mr. Trump’s signature China policy in his first term was to impose tariffs on certain Chinese goods. Mr. Biden and his aides have maintained this while expanding the policy in three main areas: strengthening cooperation and creating new security partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region; restrict technology exports to China; and leapfrog industrial policy in the United States.

In short, Mr. Biden sought to turn China politics into global politics.

During Mr. Biden’s tenure, already strained relations eased when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, the independent island that China claims as its territory, and Chinese spy balloons flew over the United States. But his team struggled to restore high-level communication, including between the two soldiers.

The U.S. and China are “competing, of course, fiercely competing, and yet we have an element of stability in the relationship so we’re not on the edge of a downward spiral,” said Jake Sullivan, a trade consultant. the White House national security. in an interview in a West Wing conference room.

“It’s a big evolution in four years in terms of how we manage relations between the two sides,” he added, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese Communist Party, he said, has accepted the composition of Biden’s team in a “managed competition” for communications.

The Biden administration has been swayed by the idea that China wants to supplant the United States as a world superpower, said Rush Doshi, the China director who served on the National Security Council there. early in the Biden administration. Many Republican lawmakers and politicians agree.

When Mr. Biden and his aides came to office, they found a big gap in sensitive areas, including the U.S. defense industrial base, Mr. Sullivan said.

The administration has put in place two “big tent pole” policies, as he said: investments aimed at modernizing American manufacturing, technological innovation and the supply chain; and investing in cooperation and collaboration, “to expand China’s strategy into a true regional and global strategy.”

Mr. Sullivan pointed to the unity not only in Asia, but also in Europe. Mr. Biden’s team has helped persuade European countries to withdraw from some trade deals with China, and NATO to make a stronger statement about China and express support for it. Taiwan.

China’s cooperation with Russia during President Vladimir V. Putin’s all-out invasion of Ukraine helped push Europe in that direction, as did efforts by China on cyber espionage.

But the trans-Atlantic ally is not far behind the United States in viewing China as a threat. Some European politicians still prioritize trade relations with China, the world’s second largest economy. And Mr. Trump’s anger with European countries could jeopardize the Biden administration’s job.

Moreover, US allies may run to China’s arms if Mr. Trump makes good on his threat to impose global tariffs even on even them.

Mr. Trump also said that his allies are withdrawing American troops, and that they have to pay the United States to protect or take care of themselves. In Asia, this concept applies to Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, as well as Taiwan.

The Biden administration had the opposite attitude. By creating a web of new defense agreements among US allies in Asia, they sought to better connect their militaries with those of the United States — which, according to the team of Mr. Biden, will help deter China.

Mr. Biden has also moved to strengthen the capabilities of several allies and the US military presence in Asia: sending Tomahawk missiles to Japan; worked with Britain to begin equipping Australia with nuclear submarine technology, and submarines as well; and expanding US military access to Philippine bases near Taiwan.

In private talks in Washington, Chinese officials complained that it was a containment policy.

A big question, difficult to answer and important to Mr. Trump’s team, is whether the Biden administration has struck the right balance between deterrence and provocation. Is China speeding up its military build-up, and is it becoming more aggressive in the region, because of the actions of the Americans in its own backyard?

Beijing took notice when Mr. Biden said on four separate occasions that the US military would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.

Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who worked briefly at the State Department under Mr. Blinken, noted that the administration’s policies have not caused controversy, and that some of the his diplomacy.

“It could have prevented the overflow,” he said. “Whether or not this disruption will capture the underlying trends remains to be seen.”

At the summit, Biden directly criticized a signature policy that Chinese officials have pressed as part of containment efforts: export controls imposed on advanced semiconductor chips, including the kind needed to the development of artificial intelligence.

After the first part was released in 2022, Mr Sullivan described it as a policy to keep “core technologies” out of the reach of competitors by setting up “small yards, high fences”.

Some experts say the policy has backfired and has actually pushed China to accelerate reforms. And the less Chinese companies rely on American technology, the less the United States will use China, they say.

Mr Sullivan said the criticism was “the wrong chronology”.

“Semiconductor export controls were really a reaction to China’s overt policy, the system actually said they were going to curb their ability to manufacture semiconductors,” he said.

Some former government officials point to other policy mistakes. Ryan Hass, the China director of President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, listed three: Mr. Biden and his team do not have a serious trade agenda for Asia, it seems. shy of dealing with China, and seems more comfortable dealing with progressive democracies on China policy. with developed countries.

But overall, he said, the policy has worked: “America is in a much stronger competitive position vis-a-vis China than it was when Biden came in.”