WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s trade battle with China will exacerbate relations with Beijing that are already fraying on several fronts as the US takes a more confrontational stance and an increasingly powerful China stands its ground.
The gloves came off Friday as the world’s two largest economies imposed tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s goods amid a spiraling dispute over technology. It comes at a time when Washington needs China’s help in ending its nuclear standoff with North Korea.
Trump’s much-vaunted personal rapport with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he hosted at his Mar-a-Lago resort three months after taking office, won’t help patch up differences, experts and former officials said.
“The notion that there’s a personal relationship which will somehow supersede China’s strategic interests and the well-being of the Communist Party is absurd,” said Daniel Russel, top US diplomat for East Asia under President Barack Obama.
“There is no scenario in which an affectionate relationship, real or imagined, is going to stay Xi’s hand,” Russel said.
Troubles in the bilateral relationship go beyond trade. China has chafed about the scope of US relations with Taiwan, US complaints about its construction of military outposts on islands in the South China Sea, tougher screening of Chinese investment in the US, visa restrictions, and accusations that it is the main source of opioids.
If not new, these are now deepening sources of tension between Washington and Beijing. Even as Trump has sought to cultivate his relationship with the increasingly dominant Chinese leader, his administration has chosen to confront an increasingly defiant China on pretty much all them. It also identified China, along with Russia, as a threat in the most recent US National Security Strategy.
In response, Beijing is hanging tough. “China has made it abundantly clear that it will never surrender to blackmail or coercion,” Chinese state news agency Xinhua said on Friday.
To what extent trade tensions bleed into other aspects of the US-China relationship remains to be seen.
Mike Pillsbury, director of the Center for Chinese Strategy at
the Hudson Institute, said US-
China relations are headed into “uncharted waters.”
Pillsbury returned recently from a visit to China, and said he was told by government officials and businessmen that they were confused about what the Trump administration wanted them to do to get the US to ease the trade tensions. They threatened to back off assisting the US nuclear talks with North Korea.
“They said we will help you (the US) less with North Korea if you start a trade war with us on July 6. Pretty clear, huh?” Pillsbury said.
China has, in fact, already distanced itself somewhat from its significant cooperation with the US on North Korea. After supporting tough UN sanctions and scaling back trade with the country after it ramped up nuclear and missile tests last year, Beijing has eased restrictions on its neighbor. That shift began after Trump in March abruptly decided to hold a summit with Kim Jong Un. Once again, China has again focused on rekindling its traditional alliance with Pyongyang — Xi has met Kim three times this year.
Abraham Denmark, a former senior US defense official on Asia, said China has welcomed Trump’s sudden shift from confrontation to diplomacy with North Korea and also his decision to halt large-scale military exercises with South Korea.
Yet China also views what happens with North Korea through the lens of the geopolitical rivalry between the US and China, he said. North Korea long served as a buffer against America’s expanding its reach in Northeast Asia to China’s border.
“If the US is going to engage in a trade war, politically, it’s going to reduce their willingness to cooperate on North Korea,” he said.
Denmark, now director of the Asia program at the Wilson Center think tank, warned of a broader deterioration in relations as China stakes out a position as world player unwilling to be pushed around: “China under Xi Jinping has been more aggressive in its pursuit of
its interests. I expect we’re going to see more tensions across the board.”
