As the United States heads to the polls for its presidential election in November, incumbent President Donald Trump has made China an election issue, launching a series of increasingly antagonistic moves against the country, which escalated already fraught tensions with it.

Biden: To get tough on China, U.S. should build on its allies

Such hostility towards Beijing is shared across party lines, with Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, promising to adopt a more assertive policy towards China too.

Outlining his foreign policy in a speech in July 2019, Biden said it is crucial for the U.S. to "get tough on China" or it will "keep robbing the U.S." of their technology and intellectual property.

And to counter Beijing, Biden said "the most effective way" to do that is to "build a united front of friends and partners to challenge China’s abusive behavior — even as we seek to deepen cooperation on issues where our interests converge, like climate change and preventing nuclear proliferation".

Biden's adviser: U.S. should focus on being "more confident"

One of Biden's advisers, East Asia expert Ely Ratner, who is Executive Vice President at the Center for a New American Security, has recently reiterated the same, saying in a Paulson Institute podcast that the U.S. should not be trying to change China.

It should instead focus on being "more confident", the former deputy national security adviser from 2015 to 2017 to then-Vice President Biden said.

Ratner said: “The China challenge right now is about us, it’s not about them, it’s about our own competitiveness, that in my view is the problem to be solved. Not just a narrow sense of investing at home and fixing ourselves at home, but also in terms of our international economics, diplomacy, our technology, our innovation, our defence and security."

U.S. should abandon its "America first" policy

He also said the U.S. should set aside its "America first" policy, and coordinate with allies such as Japan, Europe, Australia and South Korea in areas of 5G and other technology policy.

They should work together on "building secure and reliable supply chains, setting norms around human rights standards, and sharing information on investment screening," he said.

Disagreeing with what the Trump administration is doing now, which is being "confrontational" towards China without being "competitive", he said it is not in America's interest to do any of those things by themselves.

While some actions were taken to blunt China's behaviour, he opined that it is necessary to offer an alternative to other "middle economy countries", instead of simply wagging a finger at them and threatening them with sanctions, which is not "good policy".

Saying that its alliances and ability to work with allies and partners are an advantage, Ratner added that across several domains of competition with China, such as defence, ecoomics, technology, diplomacy, ideology, it was "very hard to find an issue where the U.S. was better off acting by itself or unilaterally".

He opined that the U.S. should think about the countries to work with on an issue-by-issue basis in order to advance their interests.

However, he cautioned that they should not be trying to form "a coherent, comprehensive, anti-China coalition".

Ratner raised the Taiwan issue as well, saying it requires "a rethink" from the U.S. about how to make sure that democratic government there persists, and that peace is maintained across the strait.

He also acknowledged that it is an issue that can grow to be prominent in the U.S.-China relationship, adding that while the U.S. has to preserve what's important to them, they have to think hard on how to avoid letting the situation develop into "a real confrontation".

Diplomacy has failed to bring about openness from China

Ratner has previously expressed similar views, writing in a 2018 commentary for Foreign Affairs that American expectations towards China to change in its approach to "economics, domestic politics, security and global order" have failed to bear any fruit.

In words reminiscent of U.S. State Secretary Mike Pompeo's declaration of failure of 50 years of diplomacy with China, he said:

"Neither carrots nor sticks have swayed China as predicted. Diplomatic and commercial engagement have not brought political and economic openness.

Neither U.S. military power nor regional balancing has stopped Beijing from seeking to displace core components of the U.S.-led system. And the liberal international order has failed to lure or bind China as powerfully as expected.

China has instead pursued its own course, belying a range of American expectations in the process."

Will Biden's China policy be any different if he's elected?

However, Biden has been criticised for not doing much to counter China when he was vice president under former U.S. President Barack Obama, who has also been criticised himself for failing to rein in China's increasingly assertive behaviour, such as its militarisation of disputed areas in the South China Sea.

“The Obama administration was a little slow in realising how assertive Chinese foreign policy was going to be and the extent to which China was going to crack down domestically,” Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told LA Times.

Chinese top diplomats have, however, adopted a more conciliatory tone towards the U.S. recently, calling for "peaceful co-existence despite differences".

A contrast with its previous "wolf warrior" style of diplomacy, which saw its diplomats lash out at countries which criticised Chinese actions, the move might be aimed at "defusing the global backlash that its brash diplomacy and harsh policies have provoked", Jessica Chen Weiss, an associate professor of government at Cornell University, told The New York Times.

Other experts have also opined that China might simply be waiting till Trump's presidency is over as they prefer to deal with Biden, though it is a view that has been contested.

On the contrary, Chinese netizens wish for your reelection because you can make America eccentric and thus hateful for the world. You help promote unity in China and you also make intl news as fun as comedy. Chinese netizens call you “Jianguo,” meaning “help to construct China”. pic.twitter.com/Fzj5fvmWcx

— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) May 21, 2020

Top image via Lintao Zhang/Getty Images

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