HONG KONG — One is a former president who vows to double down on the trade war he started with China but could stoke global instability to Beijing’s benefit. The other is a vice president who might be more conciliatory in the short term but could rally U.S. allies against China’s growing global influence.
Which U.S. presidential candidate would Chinese President Xi Jinping rather work with?
Whoever wins the White House next month — former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris — will determine the tone and much of the substance of the relationship between the world’s two largest economies.
Xi has not expressed any preference for the outcome of the Nov. 5 election, with his Foreign Ministry calling it an internal U.S. affair.
The Trumps welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping and first lady Peng Liyuan to Mar-a-Lago in 2017.
Behind the scenes, Chinese officials might have a slight preference for Harris, if only to preserve the recent progress that has been made by the Biden administration in improving U.S.-China ties, said Jia Qingguo, the former dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University.
“We already had four years of experience with Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is a very unique character. He’s not a normal politician. He’s not even a normal businessman,” said Jia, who is also a political adviser to the Chinese government.
“He’s highly unpredictable, and he can be very emotional. He may take measures that would create huge problems between China and the U.S.,” Jia added.
With both Democrats and Republicans now viewing China primarily through the lens of national security, Jia and others say Chinese officials expect bumpy times ahead for relations regardless of who wins the White House.
Follow live updates on the 2024 election
Chinese officials seem to accept that both Harris and Trump are likely to take a “fairly stringent” and “skeptical” approach toward China, said Brian Wong, a fellow at the University of Hong Kong’s Centre on Contemporary China and the World.
He also said that Beijing might slightly favor Harris, viewing her as likely to pursue “more manageable” policies introduced by President Joe Biden even though they’re not necessarily China-friendly.
“I think China prefers the heightened sense of predictability and also codifiability when it comes to Harris,” he said. “But again, it’s a weak preference.”
Trump, on the other hand, is “far more likely to be erratic” and also “incredibly transactional,” Wong said.
“In theory,” he added, the former president “could be more flexible and malleable on issues pertaining to Taiwan.”
Beijing views self-governing Taiwan as its own territory, and has not ruled out the use of force in achieving unification. Though the U.S. has no official relations with Taiwan, it is the island democracy’s main arms supplier and most important international backer.
Taiwanese soldiers at a naval base in Taoyuan on Friday.
Though Taiwan was generally happy with Trump’s approach to the island while in office, more recently he has called on Taiwan to pay Washington more for its defense and accused the island of undermining the U.S. semiconductor manufacturing industry.
Asked whether he would use U.S. military force to defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression, Trump told the Wall Street Journal editorial board last week that he “wouldn’t have to” because Xi “respects me and he knows I’m f—— crazy.” He said he would respond by imposing tariffs on China of 150% to 200%, perhaps even halting trade entirely with one of the United States’ biggest trading partners.
Consistent with U.S. policy, Harris has also declined to say whether she would use military force to defend Taiwan. Instead she emphasizes the importance of military communications with China and supporting Taiwan’s ability to defend itself.
Tariff talk
Though Trump talks far more about China on the campaign trail than Harris does, neither of them have said much about how they would manage ties with Beijing.
That may be at least partly because taking a tough line on China is one of the few areas of agreement between Trump and Harris, as well as their parties. But China is also not high on the list of voters’ national security priorities compared with immigration and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
In the presidential debate last month, China came up mostly in the context of tariffs.
Biden has maintained and in some cases expanded tariffs on Chinese imports that Trump introduced as president, citing national security concerns. If she wins, Harris is expected to continue Biden’s targeted tariffs and restrictions on key Chinese tech sectors.
Trump, meanwhile, has doubled down on the idea of taxing imports, proposing blanket tariffs as high as 20% on goods from all countries and 60% or higher on goods from China. According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington-based think tank, Trump’s proposals would cost the typical U.S. household more than $2,600 a year.
Trump’s harsher trade policies toward China, combined with his antipathy toward U.S. alliances in the Asia-Pacific, point to greater instability in U.S.-China relations, said Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.
“Under a Trump presidency, Sino-U.S. relations will witness intense frictions, serious crises and even military conflicts,” he wrote in a recent essay for the Asia Society Policy Institute.
Vice President Kamala Harris during a a rally in Green Bay, Wis., on Thursday.
“U.S.-China ties will still be challenged during a Harris presidency but could be more stable than during the Trump and Biden years,” Wu said.
Harris has never been to China but she has made multiple trips to Asia as vice president, including to the Philippines, where she reiterated Washington’s commitment to defending its ally against Chinese aggression in the South China Sea.
Her only direct encounter with Xi came in 2022 on another one of those trips, when they briefly exchanged remarks at a summit of Asia-Pacific nations in Bangkok.
As a senator, Harris co-sponsored the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, which condemned Beijing’s alleged rights abuses in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, and the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which supports democracy in the Chinese territory. (Trump signed both.)
“The vice president is clear-eyed about the threats posed by China, and as president, she will ensure the United States wins the competition for the 21st century,” a campaign spokesperson said.
It remains unclear who would advise on China policy in a Harris administration, whereas Trump would most likely turn to some of the same people who influenced China policy in his first term, such as Robert O’Brien, who served as his national security adviser, and Mike Pompeo, former CIA director and secretary of state.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
On China’s heavily censored social media, Trump supporters are dominant.
Some are less concerned with Trump’s China policies but admire his authoritarian tendencies and “anti-woke” rhetoric, said Kaiser Kuo, the host and co-founder of the Sinica Podcast.
Others think Trump is likely to undermine U.S. alliances, irritate multiple countries by imposing tariffs and generally “lower America’s standing in the world, which is good for China,” he said.
One commonly used translation of Trump’s name in Chinese is Chuan Jianguo, or “Trump Builds the Nation” — the nation being China.
But it’s a mistake for either country to think of U.S.-China relations as a zero-sum game, Jia said. “What’s bad for the U.S. is not necessarily good for China,” he added.
Walz’s China record
Of the four people on the Republican and Democratic tickets, the one with the most China experience is Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. He spent a year teaching English in China after graduating from college, and later set up a company with his wife that took groups of high school students to China every summer for years.
Walz wanted to go to China “to have a look using his own eyes to see what this country is about before making any judgments,” said Christy Day, a student from Walz’s China days who now lives in Perth, Australia.
Walz, who has long been a vocal critic of China’s human rights record, said the point of his travel there was to help young Americans learn more about China and young Chinese learn more about democracy.
“I do understand China a hell of a lot better than Donald Trump,” he told reporters in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, this month, noting the praise Trump has showered on his “very good friend” Xi.
In his recent memoir, Trump’s former national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, described telling John Kelly, the president’s chief of staff at the time, that Trump had walked into Xi’s “trap” when discussing Taiwan and U.S. military exercises with South Korea, while ignoring talking points McMaster had laid out for him ahead of their 2017 meeting in Beijing. (A Trump campaign spokesperson said McMaster’s memoir was “riddled with untrue stories.”)
“Xi Jinping is not someone you should look up to,” Walz said. “Xi Jinping is not someone who you should say does a good job on things, as Donald Trump has said about Covid.”
Walz’s Republican rival, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, has discussed China largely in terms of economic competition, backing Trump’s plans for stiff tariffs on Chinese imports while stressing the need for the U.S. to compete with its rival.
Walz, whose China experience is not mentioned in his biography on the Harris campaign website, has come under fire from Republicans who see that experience not as an asset but as grounds for suspicion. Last month, the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Department of Homeland Security for information related to Walz’s “longstanding connection” with China’s ruling Communist Party.
“People wonder, is he going to be kept away from anything having to do with China because of the perception on the right that he’s ‘tainted’ by, you know, empathy, for having spent so much time there?” Kuo said.
Kuo added that he thought Walz had “a lot of connection at a human level, which I think is really desperately needed right now.”
Jennifer Jett and Peter Guo reported from Hong Kong, and Janis Mackey Frayer from Beijing.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
