With China, Joe Biden follows in Donald Trump's footsteps, except for the method
While Sino-American relations have deteriorated markedly under President Donald Trump, the meeting between the new US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Chinese counterpart should not defuse tensions. As under the old administration, Joe Biden's team closely links strategy vis-à-vis China to US domestic policy.
Americans and Chinese gathered around the same table. The tete-a-tete was expected. This is the first major meeting between the top two economic powers since Joe Biden took office. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan are due to exchange Thursday (March 18) with the highest official of the Communist Party of China (CPC) for diplomacy, Yang Jiechi, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
The meeting takes place against a backdrop of sharp bilateral tensions between Beijing and Washington on several points, including the situation in Hong Kong, human rights, technological rivalry and espionage, or the treatment of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang.
A few hours before the big meeting, Beijing assured that "all the subjects will be put on the table", while warning that it "will not make any compromise on matters concerning its sovereignty, its security and interests ".
Touring Asia since Tuesday, Antony Blinken has displayed his firmness against Beijing, showering hopes of a sudden reconciliation with the Chinese. Before leaving Tokyo for Seoul, he accused China of being more and more repressive on its soil, and "more and more aggressive abroad".
For Maya Kandel, a specialist in the United States and research associate at the University of Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, the United States under the Biden era fully intend to give itself the means to win the competition in which it is engaged with China. In this, the foreign policy of the new American president is in the direct line of that of Donald Trump, referring to issues of American domestic policy. But the method differs.
France 24: What strategy of the Biden administration is emerging through these first statements by the US Secretary of State and his tour in the region (Japan, South Korea)?
Maya Kandel: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called competition with China "the greatest geopolitical challenge of the 21st century." During his congressional hearing on January 19, then again during his first foreign policy speech on March 3, Antony Blinken clarified that China is the only country in competition with the United States in all areas at the same time, diplomatic, military, economic and technological. Beijing keeps claiming that Washington (and the West in general, Europe included) is in decline. The response of the Biden administration is that the United States intends to win this competition, and therefore give itself the means to do so.
The first summit of the Indo-Pacific Quad (United States, India, Australia, Japan) [held on March 12] is also a strong symbol of the new administration's will to address with regional allies the challenges posed by China in the region, from Chinese economic coercion on Australia to border tensions with India, but also Chinese incursions into Japanese waters, and Beijing's behavior vis-à-vis Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Xinjiang region. On the strategic level, the main concern concerns Taiwan and more broadly a rupture of the regional status quo at the initiative of Beijing. Hence the American desire to strengthen alliances in the Pacific, and the importance of Japan, the number one ally in the Indopacfique, which was entitled to Washington's first official visit [March 16].
The meeting in Alaska today, proposed by Washington, is the first at such a high level under the Biden presidency: it is about showing that the United States intends to continue to play a leading role in the region, in coordination with the Quad. It is also about re-establishing formal dialogue mechanisms and "stabilizing the competition" as Blinken put it, after the Trump period and his tweets that were sometimes uncoordinated or even contradictory with the strategy of his administration.
Do not the political attacks of the new American administration hide the economic stakes with China? Or even other areas of rivalry?
There is nothing hidden here, and the statements of the new administration are above all a response to Chinese claims of a decline in the United States and the West in general. Economic and technological rivalry is an essential dimension of the competition between the United States and China.
There is a desire to respond with an American "geoeconomic" strategy to Chinese practices. As under the Trump presidency, economic security is considered national security. This must be understood at two levels: autonomy and leadership of American industries in certain key areas; relocation or protection of American industrial jobs, many of which have been missing for two decades, especially in key states for the US presidential election. Hence the idea, after the Covid recovery plan, of another very ambitious law that would aim to counter China by strengthening American competitiveness through massive investments in key technological sectors, from semiconductors to 5G and 6G, through green technologies.
All of this stems from Biden and his national security adviser's slogan to make a "foreign policy for the middle classes." The Democratic strategists who populate the Biden administration are struck by the shock of Trump's election and the shock of China's rise. They argue that neoliberalism, which accelerated China's rise to international prominence and harmed the industrial jobs of America's middle and popular classes, also caused the election of Donald Trump.
How is Joe Biden's strategy in the region ultimately different from that of his predecessor Donald Trump?
The turn in American politics under Donald Trump would undoubtedly have happened with any American administration, because it was above all the result of a turning point in Chinese policy since Xi Jinping came to power. This is why, in this area, continuity in the general tone of Washington's Chinese policy prevails between the Biden administration and that of its predecessor. But there is also an important difference in method.
The Biden administration wants to strengthen the US position in this competition through strong domestic measures, including industrial and technological policy. Another great principle that differs from Trump: working with the United States' Asian and European allies and partners, strategically, but also more broadly to reinvest in international organizations, where the vacuum created by Trump has often been filled in the last four years. years by China. The Biden administration intends to use and illustrate the United States' main advantage over China, its network of alliances and partners, considered the main "power multipliers" internationally. Beyond that, it is also about moving away from the Trumpian vision of a zero-sum game, which was based on unilateralism, to offer an economic, technological and strategic alternative to Chinese expansionism. What Washington is now proposing goes further is an Asian, Indo-Pacific policy, and not just a Chinese one.
