China plays the Trump card, but Biden is not buying it
Originally published by The Hill
For its first month, the Biden administration lamented “the former guy’s mess” on the pandemic, the economy, vaccinations and foreign policy. But during his CNN Town Hall, President Biden finally said, “I’m tired of talking about Donald Trump. I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
China’s leaders, however, believe that blaming the former administration for Sino-U.S. tensions will leverage anti-Trump animus for Biden’s “flexibility” on contentious issues. With Trump gone, Washington can forget “the China threat” and revert to the “normalcy” that Beijing found so advantageous during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations.
Last week, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, again called for a return to the pre-Trump era of good feelings. His speech was unabashedly entitled, “Promoting Dialogue and Cooperation and Managing Differences: Bringing China-U.S. Relations Back to the Right Track”
Wang cited the conversation between Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping: “This very important phone call has oriented China-U.S. relations that had been struggling to ascertain its bearings at a crossroads. It has also sent out the first encouraging news of this spring for the two countries and the whole world.”
Wang identified the source of the frictions: “The root cause was that the previous U.S. administration, out of its own political needs, seriously distorted China’s future path and policy and … took various measures to suppress and contain China, which inflicted immeasurable damage to bilateral relations. Today, to right the wrongs and bring the relationship back to the right track, the walls of misperceptions must be torn down.”
Biden’s campaign rhetoric conflated the president’s erratic style and his national security team’s sober policies. Chinese officials anticipated the revival of “strategic patience” and “leading from behind” practiced by the Obama-Biden administration, where many of Biden’s appointees served.
Click HERE to read more.
