AFP: Despite low relations, China may want Trump to be re-elected

Agence France-Presse/Yahoo

Donald Trump has frustrated and enraged China during a tumultuous first term, but Beijing may welcome his re-election as it scans the horizon for the decline of its superpower rival.

Relations are as icy as at any time since formal ties were established four decades ago, with China warning it does not want to be drawn into a new "Cold War" with the United States.

Under his 'America First' banner, Trump has portrayed China as the greatest threat to the United States and global democracy.

He has launched a massive trade war that has cost China billions of dollars, harangued Chinese tech firms and lay all the blame for the pandemic with Beijing.

But another Trump triumph in November may have its advantages for China as President Xi Jinping seeks to cement his nation's rise as a global superpower.

China's leadership could be handed "the opportunity to boost its global standing as a champion for globalisation, multilateralism, and international cooperation," said Zhiqun Zhu, professor of political science and international relations, Bucknell University.

Trump has pulled America from a sprawling Asia-Pacific commercial deal and climate agreements, imposed billions of dollars of tariffs on Chinese goods, and withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization at the height of a global pandemic.

Where the US has retreated, Xi has stepped forward.

He has presented his country as the champion of free trade and a leader in the fight against climate change, as well as vowed to share any potential Covid-19 vaccine with poorer nations.

"A second Trump term could give China more time to rise as a great power on the world stage," Zhu said.

Philippe Le Corre, a China expert at the Harvard Kennedy School in the United States, agreed an extension of Trump's 'America First' policies would be of long-term benefit for Beijing.

"(It) partially cuts Washington off from its traditional allies," he added, and that gave China room to manoeuvre.

China's nationalists have openly cheered, or jeered, for Trump.

"You can make America eccentric and thus hateful for the world," Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a chest-beating nationalist paper, warned in a Tweet directed at the US president.

"You help promote unity in China."

Trump is also lampooned on China's heavily censored social media as 'Jianguo', meaning "help to build China".

- Biden trouble -

Trump has undoubtedly inflicted economic and political pain on China.

"China has lost out enormously in its plan for trade and technology," said Beijing-based political analyst Hua Po.

In January the US and China signed a deal bringing a partial truce in their trade war that obliged Beijing to import an additional $200 billion in American products over two years, ranging from cars to machinery and oil to farm products.

Washington has also turned its guns on Chinese tech firms it says poses security threats, throwing the future US operations of video-sharing app TikTok -- owned by Chinese parent company Bytedance -- into uncertainty.

Mobile giant Huawei is also on Trump's hitlist.

The enmity also extends into defence and human rights, with Taiwan, Hong Kong and the treatment of China's Muslim Uighur minority all making waves in US.

But China may not win much relief in any of these areas if Trump loses to Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

Beijing worries that Biden is likely to renew American leadership on human rights, pressing China on issues of the Uighurs, Tibet and freedom in Hong Kong.

"Biden is likely to be tougher than Trump on human rights issues in Xinjiang and Tibet," said Zhu, of Bucknell University.

And on tech and trade -- crucial flash points in the US-China rivalry -- it is unclear just how much room a Biden White House would have to manoeuvre.

"Biden will inherit the tariffs, and I'm doubtful he would lift them unilaterally," said Bonnie Glaser, Director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Beijing will probably have to concede to other US demands if it wants the tariffs lifted."

China will also have to come up with convincing arguments on data security if it is to avoid more damaging bans on its tech firms.

Washington sees Huawei -- the global leader on 5G internet -- as a serious security threat.

"Politically, it will be almost impossible for Biden to reverse these policies," Fallon said.

"Huawei has been on the US radar as a security threat even before the Trump presidency."

"But... but... the intelligence report says China wants Biden..." That report is led by a Trump sycophant in the intelligence agency, which really just felt like saying "Yeah, Russia wants Trump, but Dems are commies, so China wants Biden."

Besides that, this is what I've been saying. Trump has perhaps been doing China more favors than thwarted them. Plus, it's evident that China knows Trump is a chaos agent. Just look at their response to various ongoing protests in the States (most evidently after George Floyd's death and China called hypocrisy on the US after their response to Hong Kong). They don't have to like Trump to show it.

If you can’t see through a piece like this you need to work on your critical thinking skills. They have zero sources from within the leadership of the communist party. It’s all guesswork from some American academics (who in general despise Trump) and a random mouth piece.

Just because some article is anti-Trump doesn’t make it brilliant journalism.

Of course they want to have a dumb isolationist US president in front of the USA.

Of course they do. Trump's ineptitude has been a huge boon for China's Soft Power Strategy.

Trump is as bad at geopolitics as Glass Joe is at boxing. Since Trump got into power, and broke out of several trade agreements China has been able to fill in the void left by America for themselves heavily boosting their own economy and more importantly, every other nation's dependence on china.

Trump's trade war with China was an utter failure for America. China managed to find loopholes around it pretty fast, and now the only ones who suffered were americans.

Trump's stance on renewable energies, sticking to obsolete fossil fuel sources has ensured China will dominate the energy market in a decade. With competition from America out of the way, the world will leave america behind, and soon the world will center around China, assuming it doesn't already.

Trump had the lead, and threw the towel. Now China is the leader of this game of Sid Meier's Civilization and they are headed towards either an economic or cultural victory.

It makes total sense. Trump has removed the US from the world, isolated us and so forth, which leaves space for other powers. The more Trump we have, the less the US is in the world and the more China is.

Better the US than China, but Trump has sort of given up a lot of territory and international good will.

Not going to comment on the actual article but it's apparent China is more inclined to like an incompetent, divisive president such as trump who only needs flattery to get what one wants from him over more traditional presidents that let ambassadors deal with foreign powers for the most.

It doesn’t matter all that much to China whether Trump or Biden wins in reality.

The fact is China has reached a stage where it’s pretty comfortable and pretty much unstoppable in the absence of a full-on war with the US.

The IMF measured China to have the largest economy in the world measured by PPP and likely to be the absolute largest in a few years.

It simply does not change China’s trajectory whether Trump or Biden wins next month.

Whoever wins, the US will play, “get tough on China,” card every four years. It’s the same rhetoric that never changes, the US always needs an enemy (Russia, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Japan, North Korea, Germany, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, the UK)....

What do they mean "despite?" It's exactly because of low relations that they want Trump. They like an antagonistic isolationist president who cuts horrible deals and ruins America's presence in the global economy. They'll happily soak up our stupid trade war if it means keeping a nightmare president in place.

Not even American, Fake news had to go all the way to France to get this story. Lmfao. The damage control over the Hunter Biden incident is getting desperate.

@eoten: And that is spam. That is what your post is. Pure spam.

To be more on topic. Was it ever any doubt that an isolationist would be bad on a national scale in a world that relies more and more on trade etc between countries?

@eoten: Why damage control over a fake story nobody cares about?

FFS, the US isn't isolationist. You sound like you have absolutely no idea what you are even talking about. You act like the US has two choices, be isolationist, or be a bitch for a bunch of programs put up by globalists that do not favor the interests of the US. Do you even realize the US has been at a $5 trillion trade deficit with China since they entered the WTO?

I never understood the allure of nationalism or isolationism.

Did people learn nothing from Japan?

@eoten: He we go with the globalization is teh devil lines. Let’s ignore the historic amounts of prosperity it caused.

Always cracked me up that right wingers bitch about globalization but can’t explain what it is or why it’s bad. Just nationalism that needs to be ignored.

US was an important player on a global scene. Now China is filling the void left by US. I guess the concept of soft power is lost on you.

Btw a trade deficit isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Again, the US was LOSING MONEY on those trade deals, do you think that benefits us?

The US lost more with trump's tariffs.........

Not sure I buy that and I don't know how we would know for sure when it is a super authoritarian regime.

I think you could make the exact opposite argument that they would prefer stability and predictability as that makes it easier for China to plan, which is pretty much a hallmark for them.

no, china doesn't lose either way. Biden getting elected will probably be more beneficial in the short term since they can negotiate terms for trade once again. Trump would never lift those tarrifs.

Also, the decline of the US doesn't stop with biden getting elected. Its been going south for a long time now, the chinese are far more educated than the general US population, so future innovation will probably more and more happen in China and the asian region in general. Right now its mainly chinese people that are innovating in china, and luckily for the rest of the world the chinese don't leave a good impression on the rest of the worlds immigrants. Nobody wants to move to a dictatorship / communist country, no matter how wealthy it is, or how much opportunity is available.

Chinese 1 child policy screwed them hard though, in the future its going to destroy them from the inside if they don't do anything about it, because nobody wants to immigrate to china and live there long term.

I think the world is catching on to China. Doesn't matter who the US president is, China will start to decline.

You just bought more from them than they bought from you...

According to reports in the NYT I believe, trump has Chinese bank accounts. Hmm.........

Doubt it, China is growing increasingly powerful by the day. With one of the fastest growing GDPs per Capita. Likewise China is also shaping up to have the largest GDP in the world, and through economics, it will have a lot of soft power.

Yeah not the best time for the US to abdicate being a leader on the global stage........

I wonder how long it will take for america, nay, the world, to heal up from Trump's constant failures.

The only silver lining is that authoritarian nationalists seem to be losing popularity worldwide. Hope this taught our current generation a lesson.

@Maroxad: In terms of PPP, the measure that the IMF uses China is already the largest economy in the world.

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-now-world%E2%80%99s-largest-economy-we-shouldn%E2%80%99t-be-shocked-170719

Correct. People assuming China will somehow collapse again are being incredibly arrogant. China is already has the largest economy adjusted for PPP. And its lead will only increase further in the coming years.

On a related note: Being swedish, I remember some Trump Supporter sending me links of how Sweden's economy would collapse by 2017. I showed him plenty of evidence showing the contrary. And he handwaved it, tried to change the topic and accused me of being a shill for the government. Some people just refuse to admit they are wrong.

"Collapse by 2017?" How much further before 2017 was this? There weren't many "Trump supporters" prior.

The guy was posting this in 2019 or 2018. Which made it super easy to debunk. The article was from 2012 or so.

I cant remember the exact dates, but the point is, a certain Trump Supporter, was using an article to fearmonger, and then time went on and the OPPOSITE happened from what the model used in the article predicted. Despite this, he still used a 5 year old article, not even checking up to see if it held up.

@Maroxad: I just checked out some Swedish data and it’s really not bad.

Government debt to GDP is pretty low at just 35.10% Dec 2019, probably a little higher now but very comfortable. The Swedish government could easily implement some fiscal injection to boost the economy.

Central Bank rate is zero so there isn’t much room for interest rate cut but you could easily implement some quantitative easing.

Business confidence, Services and Manufacturing PMI are all above 50 so that’s pretty good!

Unemployment is a little high but actually not too far off the 5 year average.

So no, Sweden isn’t going to collapse anytime soon. Most of Europe and certainly the US is in a far weaker position.

Exactly what a shill for the government would say. I'm on to you agent Lynch.

Speaking of economy up here in Scandinavia. The politicians seems to think that just because they did it very well with the oil fund, they can just relax now. There is some talk about becoming a green battery for Europe, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done before that happens.

And paid more in taxes to China than US.

Of course they do so far China is the only economy that is going up by 5% or so while the rest of the world is struggling

@horgen: Oh that Norwegian oil fund, the biggest pile of cash in the world.

Yes Norway has done well with its oil unlike the British.

Isn’t it going to be quite hard for Norway to move in that direction given it’s still vast oil and gas reserves. I just checked some data, at 1.7m b/d isn’t that higher than 4 years ago?

It will need enormous political will to move in a direction that hurts the fossil fuel industry given the reserves and expertise (Norwegians are the best at enhanced oil recovery)...

I suspect with the massive recession in the world, ridiculous debt, unemployment and deflation these factors will severely impede the green movement as all corporations will seek lower costs rather than do the right thing...

And it belongs to the people... :D

Actually not that difficult. Some of the same expertise is sought after in other greener fields than oil, and oil isn't the same here after the drop in 2016 (I think it was 2016).

Offshore windmills could utilize infrastructure made for oil platforms some places. And given the plans for oil platforms, maybe all of them could have infrastructure that windmills could use.

Sadly in many areas the investments aren't bigger than being possible to do within one period for politicians. Longer and bigger projects are rarer.

So, we shouldn't do anything that may upset the regime that massacres Muslims for their beliefs, engages in slave and child labor, and even takes children from Muslim families to place into re-education centers because what? You may have to spend a little extra for your electronics? Or your Soy lattes and tofu products may go up a few cents in price? Nice to know privileged westerners have their morals and priorities straight.

Well trump does nothing about the regime that puts bounties on the heads of American soldiers, see no reason why he should feel different with china especially as he has secret bank accounts there.

I'm sure they do. Trump is incredibly weak as a president. China wishes to spread malfeaseance to the world and a weak US is paramount to that strategy.

Who would that be exactly? Because if you're talking about the NYT story that claimed Russia was putting bounties on the heads of Americans, there was never any evidence to support that, according to US intelligence and our military. More fake news from the New York Times.

defending Russia now? Wow you have reached a new low.