For China, the beginning of Trump 2.0 has brought some interesting surprises. Be it during his first term in office or during the 2024 election campaign, US President Donald Trump has maintained a tough stance vis-a-vis China. However, after being elected, in the run-up to his inauguration on January 20, he did not mention China much. Instead, he ramped up his attacks on other countries like Canada, Greenland, and Panama.
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Counterintuitively, Trump has been making certain goodwill gestures, from inviting Chinese President Xi Jinping to his inauguration ceremony to providing a high-level reception to China’s special representative and Vice President Han Zheng through US Vice President JD Vance. Zheng also met representatives of the US business community, including Tesla CEO and Trump’s “first buddy” Elon Musk.
There has also been news that Trump will visit China in the first 100 days of his tenure, which is in sharp contrast to Joe Biden’s approach. And while Trump threatened to impose a 60 per cent tariff on Chinese goods during the election campaign, after taking office, he hasn’t rushed to implement it. Instead, he set his sights on Canadian and Mexican goods, announcing plans to impose a 25 per cent tariff on both countries from February 1. The figure currently being discussed for China is around 10 per cent.
Not just that, Trump has also taken a comparatively accommodative stance on the TikTok issue, postponing a prospective TikTok ban, and stressing that “TikTok must be saved”.
Sino-experts are cautiously optimistic that Trump’s milder-than-expected attitude reflects a willingness to “reach some kind of agreement” with China, and if China makes concessions that Trump believes are beneficial to both him and the United States, he will most likely relook at his China policy. But can Trump and Xi reach a compromise? After all, even during Trump’s first term, they met at Mar-a-Lago, but within one year, bilateral ties hit rock bottom.
China’s Suspicion
Sections within China’s strategic community remain deeply suspicious of Trump’s intentions. For example, Jin Canrong, professor of the School of International Relations at the Renmin University of China, an expert on American issues, argued that Trump, in his heart, regards China as a key competitor. His cabinet is full of China hawks like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Presidential Assistant for National Security Affairs Waltz. He will not change his attitude towards China that easily. His tactics may change, or get more complicated than before. Trump’s “flattering” of China, he said, represents a change in his approach: to put the responsibility of improving China-US relations solely on China.
The view is seconded by Zheng Yongnian, Dean of the Institute for Advanced Study on Global and Contemporary China, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, who argued that Trump will not give up on imposing tariffs on Chinese products. Nor will it not give up on its attempt to lead or even monopolise the fourth industrial revolution.
Articles in Chinese media further highlighted how Trump’s recent overtures vis-a-vis Greenland, Canada, and Panama may all be linked to great power competition. By building a “unified North America” with resources, industry, and market, Trump wants to get rid of America’s dependence on Chinese manufacturing and achieve re-industrialisation and an independent industrial ecology.
On the other hand, this will also enhance the strategic depth of American military power to cope with China’s growing military strength, noted an article on the popular news website Guancha. For example, in the Chinese assessment, one of the important reasons why Trump wants to purchase Greenland is that it has about one-quarter to one-fifth of the rare earths in the world.
US-China Powerplay
In the game between China and the United States, the former so far had the rare earth card to constrain the United States. But Trump, Chinese observers argue, now wants to get rid of this constraint and create a rare earth supply chain without China. How far Trump’s effort will be successful, of course, remains uncertain.
Given this backdrop, the message emanating from China’s strategic community for Trump 2.0 is rather intriguing: that China’s development is unstoppable. It is very much on its way to taking a decisive lead over the United States in terms of comprehensive national power. The US can now only vent its frustration on its “lackeys and stooges”. Rather than competing with China, they say, the US should regard China’s development as an opportunity and compete with countries like India for the runner-up place (referring to the MAGA meltdown over the H-1B issue a few days ago). A proposition whose implications should not be lost on New Delhi.
(Antara Ghosal Singh is Fellow, ORF, New Delhi. She is a graduate from Tsinghua University, China, and has been a Chinese language fellow at the National Central University, Taiwan)
(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author)
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