Commentary: Possibility of Trump 2.0 should push China to recalibrate foreign policy

HONG KONG: When China’s more than 350 senior officials converged in Beijing last month for the landmark third plenum of the Communist Party’s 20th Congress, it was all about President Xi Jinping.
After they emerged from the four-day meeting held behind closed doors, which ended on Jul 18, they put a glowing stamp of approval on Xi’s core views and vision for how the party should build the world’s second-largest economy into a modern socialist nation by 2035, with more than 300 reform measures to be completed by 2029.
China’s cheerleading state media have since fired on all cylinders, praising Xi as a visionary leader committed to reform and opening up, showing the way forward not only for China but the rest of the world.
Behind closed doors, however, Chinese leaders are believed to have spent quite some time talking about another man who could throw a spanner in the works, more than 10,000km away.
Donald Trump’s likely election to the White House for a second time in November and its ramifications for China was a hotly discussed and debated topic, according to one source familiar with the thinking of the Chinese leadership.
After all, US-China relations took a decisive turn for the worse in 2018 when the then American president launched a trade war against China as part of his administration’s efforts to ramp up geopolitical rivalry with Beijing.
Chinese officials had been eyeing the rising chance of Trump’s return with great interest even before the third plenum – so-called because it was the third meeting of the party’s five-year cycle – after US President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance on Jun 27 and the assassination attempt on Trump on Jul 13, two days before the meeting started.
They may not acknowledge this publicly but Trump 2.0 could have profound ramifications for how China will carry out Xi’s vision of reform and opening up.
Trump may not be the reason that the sweeping 22,000-word reform blueprint released after the meeting is heavy on high-sounding slogans and light on details. It has been the party tradition that a key meeting like the third plenum focuses on long-term commitments, leaving the specifics to be sorted out by the relevant departments in the coming months.
But it may just fit the thinking of the Chinese leadership as they need to wait and see if Trump wins.
The prevailing sentiment among China watchers is that Trump 2.0 will worsen bilateral ties between the world’s two largest economies, already at a historic low. Trump has declared in recent interviews that he would consider even higher tariffs on Chinese imports if elected.
The concern is understandable, but a potential Trump presidency may not be all gloom and doom for bilateral ties, from a Chinese point of view.
First of all, the Chinese leadership has long concluded that whoever enters the White House next, Trump or Kamala Harris, it is unlikely to lead to any notable improvement in ties. The best they can hope for is to stabilise the relationship when China wants to focus on growing the economy at home.
In many ways, Trump’s signature transactional approach to US leadership in international affairs could work in China’s favour geopolitically. In a recent interview, Trump reaffirmed his long-held scepticism over defending Taiwan in the event of an attack from the Chinese mainland.
Trump 2.0 could help dial down the temperature over the Taiwan issue, which Beijing considers the most important red line in bilateral ties.
Trump’s threat to impose higher tariffs on Chinese imports could deal a major blow to China’s exports and manufacturing, but it should be read in the global context that he would go after everyone that runs a trade surplus with the US, including the European Union.
Furthermore, his repeated warnings to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies to increase their defence spending – Trump advisers have reportedly floated the idea of demanding an increase in spending to 3 per cent of gross domestic product, a higher target than they had agreed to – would heighten tensions between Washington and these European nations.
All this could provide a much-needed opportunity for China to disrupt the united Western front that Washington has cobbled together to resist the perceived rising and assertive influence of Beijing.
China’s foreign policy priority is thus expected to focus on repairing and restoring ties with European countries, which have been hit by Beijing’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rising trade tensions.
To improve its fraught ties with Europe, Beijing must be seen doing more to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
It seems to be starting to do just that. Late last month, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi hosted his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in Guangzhou, the first time a Ukrainian foreign minister has visited China since Russia’s invasion.
On the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Laos late last month, Wang also met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to discuss the Ukraine situation, among other topics. This has given rise to speculation that China is stepping up efforts to mediate in the Ukraine crisis.
This has come as JD Vance, Trump’s running mate for the US vice presidency, said a second Trump administration would try to quickly negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine so that Washington can focus on China.
Whether Vance plans to use China as an excuse to swiftly end the Ukraine war, or even whether that is Trump’s real intention, remains to be seen but a potential Trump presidency has provided an urgent catalyst for China to recalibrate its foreign policies.
Wang Xiangwei is a former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post. He now teaches journalism at Baptist University. This commentary was first published on SCMP.