Has US foreign policy in recent years surprised the Chinese leadership?
Yes, and that’s exactly the point I made in my International Affairs article. Not only did Chinese officials and established scholars grossly underestimate the deep frustrations with China among America’s policy, business and academic elites, they also had a false sense of stability in the relationship that they attributed to the Sino-US economic interdependence. They also misunderstood Trump the individual, believing that he could be appeased and mollified by Chinese ‘buy buy buy’. As is clear by now, his administration has been ramping up more pressure on China across the board and there are China hawks across the political spectrum.
How did the Chinese leadership respond to Trump’s election victory?
Ahead of the 2016 US election, the majority opinion within the Chinese foreign policy establishment could be summarized as ‘anyone but Clinton’. Many held deep antipathy toward former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for her hawkish China approach and her stance on human rights and democracy. They preferred Trump, thinking that as a one-note politician he’d be much easier to deal with. The election result was therefore widely perceived as good news in China.
What are China’s intended outcomes from its policy towards the United States?
China’s US strategy was epitomized by the phrase, ‘dou er bu po’, meaning ‘struggle but not split’ or managed competition. While Chinese leaders and officials knew clashes with Washington over certain issues were unavoidable, they did genuinely want to maintain some general stability in the overall relationship while making progress on Taiwan. However, the relationship has been in free fall since the trade war. Therefore, it is doubtful whether the old idea still holds much sway in Beijing. Now, there does not seem to be a coherent strategy or game plan either. The tactic at the moment appears to be tit-for-tat or, so to speak, fight as you go.
Huawei’s recent expansion of 5G services across the world has been met with hostility from the US intelligence establishment. Is it possible to detach economic and security concerns in the context of current US–China relations?
This is impossible now. The case with Huawei is indicative of the American determination to decouple from China economically and technologically. For all the apocalyptic warnings of Huawei as a national security threat by American officials, the fact that the US has not been able to persuade even its closest Western allies — the UK for instance — has laid bare not only the weakness of the American argument but also the strategic rationale of Washington’s global hunt of the Chinese telecom giant. In that sense, Huawei is but a pawn in the wider geopolitical rivalry.
