The Next Four Years: US-China Relations Under Biden
Our panel of experts joined us to give some insight into how US-China relations will evolve under newly-inaugurated President Biden. Gideon Rachman (Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator at the Financial Times), Dr Evan Medeiros (Penner Family Chair of Asia Studies at Georgetown University, Former Director for China at the NSC and lead advisor on Asia-Pacific under President Obama) and Jude Blanchette (Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS).
The wide-ranging conversation looked at policy priorities for President Biden’s new team and why the next 18 months of Chinese politics may represent a window of opportunity for Western democracies to coalesce and change the cost-benefit equation of CCP aggression. Both Evan Medeiros and Jude Blanchette highlighted the risk of the US’ over-reliance on sanctions.
The panellists also discussed specific areas where the UK could offer strategic and symbolic value to the US, before concluding by touching on the opportunities and challenges of democratic coalitions - and whether the US should boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics.
You can watch the recording above or read the full transcript.
Highlights
On the current political mood in China: Jude Blanchette: “If 2008 spelled the end of the US neoliberal economic system as a model, clearly the past four years are the final death knell of Beijing looking to the West for ideas on how it should structure its governance system. Xi Jinping is pedal to the metal that they have found the secret sauce of a governance system that combines state and market autonomy and centralization of party and state. What they're trying to do now is refine it. They're not looking out to the outside world for answers anymore.”
On Xi Jinping’s political outlook: Evan Medeiros: “There are three key dates coming up that create incentives for the Chinese to focus more domestically, and as a result to avoid external instability. So the first is in July of this year is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. Right, huge political event for Xi Jinping. And I'm going to borrow a phrase from Jude, it's sort of the kickoff of Xi Jinping's reelection campaign in terms of its significance. Date number two, the Winter Olympics in China, in February of 2020. The Olympics as an international event that China hosts is always a caution-inducing event. In fact, if you look back at 2008, when it hosted the Summer Olympics, the Chinese sort of opened up momentarily, to present a more positive image to the world. And then, of course, as Jude pointed out, in the fall of 2022, you have the next Party Congress in which Xi Jinping is trying to pull off the hat trick of a third term unlike, you know, basically any Chinese leader in the reform era.”
On US-China: Jude Blanchette: “I think there are two countries in the world that don't spend much time thinking about what the outside world thinks about them. That's the United States and China. These are two countries where if you look at domestic discussion, and debate, it is almost exclusively focused on what's in our best interest, what's happening within our borders, what do we need to secure our own national interest?”
Understanding the CCP: “But to me, the big takeaway is: we don't understand enough about where the pressure points are in Beijing's internal logic to be able to impose costs.” Jude Blanchette.
On coalition-building: Evan Medeiros: “This is probably the single most important question in facing America's China policy. How do you operationalize this notion of collective action? It's very simple to cite it. It's very difficult to turn into reality.”
On where the UK fits in: Evan Medeiros: “Well, I think there are a variety of different baskets, you know, diplomatically coordinating our approaches on major challenges like Hong Kong and Xinjiang, which we're already doing. I think we're witnessing right now the emergence of a very interesting Anglosphere: America, Britain, Canada and Australia, coordinating visa policies, creating opportunities for those in Hong Kong that want to come to the United States, UK, including studying. As the Biden administration looks to rebuild America's profiling at international institutions like the UN Human Rights Commission, etc. I think there's a lot of space for US-UK cooperation on technology policy, and making sure that our economies retain our leads and critical technology, so coordinating on export control technologies, I think that's another important area.
Militarily, obviously, the United States because of the nature of its substantial interest, as well as its capabilities will always be the dominant security actor among the Anglosphere. But I think, consistent demonstrations of support by London, like that carrier operation in the South China Sea. It may be symbolic, but those sorts of symbols matter, especially when, you know, Britain remains a member of unique agreements, like the Five Power agreement, operating your power off the Malaysian peninsula.
And then, of course, there's economic policy and coordinating economic policy to push Beijing for a more level playing field. Now, the challenge with all of these is that there are costs associated with them. And are Washington and London going to be aligned on absorbing those costs? I think that's going to be a real challenge. But I'd like to see the conversation begin. I think it needs to begin at the top level. And when I was at the National Security Council and met regularly with my friends and colleagues in the Foreign Office, I can tell you among this China specialists, and this was years ago, and an enormous amount of expertise and support for a greater degree of coordination and collaboration. So I see the upside as very substantial.”
On Britain joining the CPTPP: Evan Medeiros: “I think, Britain joining the CPTPP is an incredibly important move…So, to me, Boris Johnson's move towards CPTPP and his efforts to grow economic links with India are really smart strategic moves to suggest to China that Britain has alternatives, and that Chinese coercion against Britain just pushes Britain into new interesting directions full stop.”
On democracies: Jude Blanchette: “The discussion in Beijing at a deeper level is about how do we implement our longer term strategic ambitions and our grand strategy which is about very much the world that China hopes to shape and the role that China wants to play in it. I think we should take a page. I think we should take a page. Evan was saying as much: we should be investing in ad hoc and and more structural coalitions of democracies, not with the explicit purpose of dealing with China. But to actually just strengthen democratic institutions and a free and open global order, of which dealing with China is a subset of that.”