How Republicans could hurt Biden strategy on China
President Joe Biden went to the State Department on Thursday to reaffirm his commitment to diplomacy and U.S. alliances, after a Trump presidency that disdained both and gutted the foreign service. Biden knows those alliances, in Europe and Asia, will be key to coping with a rising China.
Xi Jinping has made clear his intent to surpass the United States as the world’s dominant economic and technological power, and to shape a new global order that revolves around Beijing’s authoritarian model. Donald Trump’s erratic America First efforts failed to curb Xi’s ambitions.
Yet, across town at the Capitol, the rhetoric of Marjorie Taylor Greene laid bare Biden’s biggest challenge to managing the competition with China: the global perception that U.S. politics are consumed by crazy conspiracy theories.
Chinese Communist Party communiques and media are filled with triumphalist conviction that China is historically destined to rise as the United States falls.
So the biggest China policy question is whether Biden can, as he put it, “reclaim our credibility” as a global leader.
After World War II, the United States engaged in a policy of “containment” with the Kremlin, based on U.S. diplomat George Kennan’s famous 1946 “long telegram,” which argued that the Soviet Union would ultimately collapse because of internal contradictions.
As the Financial Times’ economics commentator, Martin Wolf, argues, “Containing China is not a feasible option.” The Soviet Union’s state-controlled economy failed to adapt and grow, whereas China has made stunning economic and technological advances over the last four decades.
China is so integrated into the world economy that even as the United States tries to untangle supply chains from China dependence, most countries want good relations with both Washington and Beijing.
Beijing has made huge loans across Asia and into Europe as part of its Belt and Road Initiative aimed at building the infrastructure to link China and the world. Although many developing countries are becoming nervous at their level of debt to China, few can resist the temptation to take loans they cannot obtain elsewhere. As the former president of Kyrgyzstan, Roza Otunbayeva, once told me in an interview, “Where else can we get this money at 2%?”
The European Union has become wary of Chinese attempts to buy up sophisticated technology companies, which the United States opposes as a security risk.
Even the Europeans have trouble resisting Chinese lures. The EU just signed on to a massive Chinese investment deal, rejecting Biden’s request to wait until he was inaugurated.
All this matters, because Xi has exhibited a ruthlessness and willingness to crush dissent not seen since Mao Zedong. And unlike Mao, Xi has built up a military that seeks to advance its footprint abroad.
So Biden’s intent to rejuvenate alliances in Asia is crucial to making Xi take notice that if he oversteps certain lines, democratic nations will push back.
Yet our allies don’t know whether they can still trust American leadership. As Wolf writes: “Over the last two decades and especially the last four years, the U.S. has devastated its reputation for good sense, decency, reliability and even adherence to basic democratic norms.” (And the U.S. reputation for competence has been smashed this past year by Trump’s dismal failures in dealing with COVID-19.)
So when the GOP leadership refuses to punish Greene, who endorsed the shooting of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; called 9/11 and mass shootings of children fake “false flag” events; and embraced Qanon crazies — how can allies make sense of American politics? Embraced by Trump, her staged “apology” on Thursday blamed her misdeeds on Democrats and the press.
And how can allies be certain Trumpism won’t return to the White House in four years? To deal with China, Biden will have to convince allies — and Beijing — that the United States can get its own house in order. It will be tragic if GOP leaders undercut the crucial effort to counter Xi Jinping.