Constructive ties with China will help Biden tackle key challenges

In his inauguration speech as the 46th president of the United States on Wednesday, Joe Biden vowed to tackle the unprecedented challenges facing the US today, from the raging novel coronavirus pandemic and growing inequality in the country to climate crisis and restoring the US’ global role.

He appealed for national unity in a sharply divided nation, and said there is “much to repair, much to restore, much to heal, much to build and much to gain”. He also urged Americans to set aside politics and face the pandemic as one nation and suggested people show a little tolerance and humility, and stand in the other person’s shoes.

Internationally, Biden said, “we will repair our alliances, and engage with the world once again”.

Indeed, Biden has assumed office at an extremely tough time — after four years of destructive Donald Trump presidency. It is commendable that Biden spent the first day signing executive orders and taking actions to undo and reverse Trump’s unilateral and harmful policies, by rejoining the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization, and revoking the controversial travel ban that primarily impacted Muslim countries, popularly known as the “Muslim ban”.

The to-do list is long for Biden. It should also include correcting Trump’s disastrous policies on China, such as the punitive tariffs on Chinese goods, war on Chinese high-tech companies, and fear-mongering of Confucius Institutes, to name just a few.

A stable and constructive China-US relationship will help Biden to effectively deal with many of the key domestic and global challenges he highlighted in his inaugural speech.

A recent report by the US-China Business Council and Oxford Economics shows that merely relaxing the tariffs imposed by Trump would greatly boost the US economy and employment, which took a major hit during the pandemic. The report warns that if the US continues its attempts to separate its markets from China, the US economy would lose $1.6 trillion in real GDP terms over the next five years, and generate 732,000 fewer jobs in 2022 and 320,000 fewer jobs in 2025.

Biden’s call for unity and reconciliation in the US could be extended internationally, where global solidarity is badly needed to contain the pandemic, fight climate change, prevent nuclear proliferation, boost global economic recovery and improve global governance.

Without the two largest economies working together, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to address any of these major global challenges.

No doubt there are some major differences between China and the US, as they always have been. But the many mechanisms of high-level dialogues the Trump administration abandoned had previously proved far more effective in resolving issues and managing differences than Trump’s unilateral policies did in the past four years.

Biden and many of his appointees have served in the Barack Obama administration and know well the value of expanding China-US engagement, including by re-inviting China to the Rim of Pacific multilateral naval war drills. And military-to-military exchanges are essential to avoid misunderstandings and accidents, and ensure peace and stability in the South China Sea.

Biden should make a decisive move to prevent anti-China forces from triggering a new Cold War — as some during the Trump administration tried to do. Countries in Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America, including key US allies, have all made it clear they don’t want to be forced to choose sides between China and the US.

None of these will be easy given the bitter US partisan politics and the revival of McCarthyism over the past four years. It would take courage to right the wrongs of the previous administration because China hawks in Washington would be ready to create a ruckus. Yet the best time to act is now given that the Democrats control both houses of Congress.

As Chinese leaders have said, a peaceful and harmonious bilateral relationship will make both China and the US winners, while a confrontational one will make both sides losers. That is also true for the rest of the world.

A stable and constructive China-US relationship will help Biden to effectively deal with many of the key domestic and global challenges he highlighted in his inaugural speech.