China Braces for a New Era of U.S. Rivalry With Trump’s Return

Beijing is expecting more volatility and competition with the United States, though a lackluster economy may limit China’s options for pushing back.

For the past year, the United States and China have tried to manage their rivalry to reassure the world that tensions between the superpowers would not spiral into conflict. The return of President Donald J. Trump to the White House threatens to upend that delicate balance.

As a statesman, Mr. Trump’s calling card is his unpredictability. He revels in mixing threats with flattery to keep his counterparts guessing. On China, he has vowed to impose blanket tariffs on Chinese exports, and threatened duties as high as 200 percent if China were to ever “go into Taiwan,” the self-governed island claimed by Beijing.

But Mr. Trump has also praised Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, saying on a Joe Rogan podcast that he was a “brilliant guy” for controlling 1.4 billion people with an “iron fist.”

Regardless of the direction of Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, Beijing has likely concluded after Mr. Trump’s first presidency that he intends to wage a fierce rivalry with China, no matter what he says.

“Xi Jinping is an unsentimental leader with a dark interpretation of America’s intentions toward China,” said Ryan Hass, the director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. “He would be open to a friendlier leader-level relationship with Trump, but he would not expect a warmer personal relationship with Trump to dampen America’s competitive impulses toward China.”

Buttressing Beijing’s view is the fact there is bipartisan consensus in the United States about confronting China. Trump may have started an era of bare-knuckled competition with the trade war and increased American support for Taiwan, but that approach didn’t change under President Biden.

If anything, Beijing says U.S. pressure has only intensified. Mr. Xi has accused the Biden administration of unfairly containing and suppressing China. He points to the deepening security arrangements between the United States and its allies and partners in Asia; restrictions on Chinese access to American technology like advanced chips; and the use of U.S. sanctions to punish Beijing for its tacit support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

While the precise details of Mr. Trump’s foreign policy agenda will likely remain unclear until he picks his cabinet, China is already showing it is more prepared for whatever is in store compared to Mr. Trump’s first presidency.

In just the past month, China has been cozying up to American allies and partners who might feel uncertain about the future of Washington’s reliability. It struck a deal with India to ease its border tensions, and Chinese troops exchanged sweets with Indian soldiers during the festival of Divali, along the disputed territory. It hosted senior British and Japanese officials in Beijing to smoothen ties. And it lifted restrictions on key Australian exports to China, like wine and lobster.

Over the years, China has also doubled down on efforts to become more self-reliant on technology, investing billions into developing its own top-of-the-line chips. And China has continued to build up its military. Mr. Xi, in a show of strength earlier this week, inspected his country’s elite Airborne Corps, paratroopers trained to “liberate Taiwan.”

China’s bid to insulate itself from a potential Trump shock, however, could be constrained by its weak economy, which has been battered by a property crisis. China was not nearly as vulnerable during the first Trump administration, and it may have fewer options to retaliate in a trade war.

Some voices in China are urging the country to exercise restraint. Jia Qingguo, a professor of international relations at Peking University, urged China to prepare for greater competition with the United States not only by investing in its military and economy, but also by avoiding accidental military conflict in the South China Sea and Taiwan and sidestepping unnecessary disputes with other countries.

But some Chinese analysts like Zhou Bo, a retired colonel in the People’s Liberation Army and a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy in Beijing, said that China was getting better at standing up to the United States because it has weathered the opposing styles of the first Trump presidency and the Biden administration.

China responded to Mr. Trump’s blustery Twitter diplomacy by introducing its own brand of muscular and acerbic statecraft known as “Wolf Warrior,” a nickname inspired by ultranationalistic Chinese action movies of the same name. And to counter President Biden’s democratic alliance building, China aggressively courted deeper ties with developing nations and with Russia. As the United States has built ties with Taiwan, China has ramped up exercises near it, including large-scale drills to encircle the island in a simulated blockade.

“Some people in China say Trump bashed China with a hammer and Biden cut China with a surgical knife,” Mr. Zhou said. “We have experienced both of them. But the trend is, China is gaining in strength, despite the stress.”

Ties had sunk to their lowest point in decades in early 2023 after the United States shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon as it floated over the United States. But the relationship had stabilized in the past year as the Biden administration has emphasized intensive diplomacy — dispatching the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, to meet with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, several times.

Whether such engagement will continue under the new Trump administration will depend in part on whom Mr. Trump selects as his advisers. Those could include China hawks, such as Robert E. Lighthizer, the former U.S. trade representative. Depending on who is picked, his cabinet members might also restrain Mr. Trump’s transactional tendencies and instead advocate for a more ideological approach to China based on an opposition to the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian rule.

Parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda may turn out to be favorable to China. During his first term, Mr. Trump showed little interest in human rights, favoring trade and business deals first. In 2020, he told Axios that he shelved a plan to punish Chinese officials and entities linked to the internment of Uyghurs to avoid jeopardizing trade talks.

Mr. Trump’s isolationist-leaning “America First” policy could also lead to Washington weakening its alliances around the world. That could give China an opportunity to fill the void and expand its global influence.

It remains to be seen how China will negotiate with Mr. Trump the second time around. With President Biden, China sought leverage by agreeing to work together on fentanyl and allowing members of its military to hold talks with American counterparts. It is unclear if Mr. Trump would value any of those concessions.

On Wednesday, as Mr. Xi conveyed his congratulations to Mr. Trump on his electoral victory, he emphasized Beijing’s argument that confrontation would hurt both countries. Mr. Xi has sought to push back on efforts by the United States to define the relationship primarily by competition, seeing it as cover for a campaign to block China’s rise.

He said he hoped the leaders could “find a correct way for China and the United States to get along in the new era.”

Some Chinese scholars urged Beijing to move quickly to set up a meeting between Mr. Xi and Mr. Trump once he assumes office, noting that direct communication would be needed to manage differences.

Wu Xinbo, the dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, noted that during Mr. Trump’s first term, Chinese officials underestimated the American leader, possibly because they were unfamiliar with his approach, but that they should be more prepared for his second term.

“This means being ready for negotiations as well as confrontations; both will be necessary, and we may need to engage in talks and conflicts simultaneously,” Mr. Wu said.

Li You contributed research from Beijing and Hari Kumar from New Delhi.

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