Beijing ‘prepared for rainy days’ if Trump is re-elected
Beijing was prepared for new turbulence in US-China relations if Donald Trump returned to the White House, a prominent Chinese academic said yesterday.
Speaking at a summit in Hong Kong, Yang Jiemian, chairman of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies’ (SIIS) Academic Advisory Council, also said that China should “prepare for the worst” but “do its best” in response to further trade and tech frictions with the US.
It comes amid concerns of a full-blown economic war if Trump is re-elected in November.
Yang said that after dealing with the Joe Biden administration for three years, Beijing knew what was on the table and could push to “translate the San Francisco vision into reality”.
“But … we must calculate and prepare for anything that Trump could do [differently] from his first term,” he said, adding that Beijing was “always prepared for the rainy days”.
Yang was addressing former US officials, business leaders and economists at the first Global Prosperity Summit, co-organised by the SIIS and Hong Kong think tank the Savantas Policy Institute.
The three-day summit got under way as Biden said the US would raise tariffs on US$18 billion worth of Chinese goods, including quadrupling the current duties on electric vehicles to 100 per cent.
In response, China’s commerce ministry said Beijing would take “resolute measures to safeguard its interests”.
Biden and his counterpart Xi Jinping agreed to manage tensions when they met in San Francisco in November, but the US has continued to impose technology and trade restrictions against China that it says are necessary because of national security concerns and Chinese military ambitions.
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee set to take on Biden in the November 5 presidential election, has also threatened to impose 60 per cent tariffs on all Chinese imports if he is re-elected.
Yang told reporters on the sidelines of the summit that “the US suppression … always unfolds gradually”.
“We have also responded to it step by step,” he said. “Compared with six years ago, China is more confident and better prepared.”
Susan Thornton, former assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs under Trump, said during a panel discussion that both Biden and Trump were expected to take tougher measures on China.
She said Biden had mostly continued Trump’s economic policy on China, but Trump would be more unpredictable if he secured a second term.
“The Biden administration is still very intent on managing the relationship and having it be stabilised and predictable,” Thornton said. “We don’t know what we’ll see from the Trump administration … how Trump would approach allies in Asia … and also the question of Taiwan and how that would be managed.”
Trump’s former ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, James Gilmore, said earlier this month that Trump would be “supportive” of Taiwan if he was re-elected as the island had become a dangerous flash point in US-China relations.
At another panel discussion yesterday, Kurt Tong, former US consul general to Hong Kong and Macau, said Washington’s “small yard, high fence” policy on China was getting “bigger” with “a lot of holes”.
“If you’re going to have the technology denial policy, is that clearly defined?” he said.
“If you’re suspecting the other side of making every item on the planet into a weapon, then there will be no more trade. Right? So we do need to figure out the difference between goods which can and should be traded or invested freely, and others that can be protected for national security purposes.”
Huang Ping, director of the Centre for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told reporters on the sidelines of the summit that the US “should not use national security challenges as an excuse to restrict China’s scientific and technological development”.
Hong Kong has a special role to play in stabilising the China-US relationship, but it must also step up its game in rebuilding bridges with the rest of the world, according to analysts.
They made the call at the inaugural Global Prosperity Summit yesterday, spearheaded by Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, convenor of the government’s key decisionmaking Executive Council.
The gathering is aimed at facilitating greater exchanges between Hong Kong and the rest of the world and clearing up misunderstandings about the country.
“Hong Kong can play a big role [in the China-US relationship]. We are an international cosmopolitan [city]. We are well-connected. We understand the culture and political systems of both mainland [China] and the West,” Ip said.
“We are well-positioned to really maximise our role as a superconnector and an intermediary between the mainland and the world.”
Ip’s comments echoed panellist Professor Huang Ping, director of the Centre for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
He described Hong Kong as not only unique within the country but also the world.
He attributed the quality to the fact Hong Kong practised a capitalist system on Chinese soil, allowing it to be part of the Western economy.
“We don’t have such a place anywhere else. So Hong Kong will bridge, not only the US and China, [but also] China with the rest of the world,” he said.
Hong Kong could help address problems commonly faced by China and the United States and even ease confrontations between the two superpowers in areas such as climate change, artificial intelligence and global health, the scholar added.
Panellist Kurt Tong, who served as the top US diplomat in Hong Kong from 2016 to 2019, said US-China relations were currently stable even though engagement between the city and Washington at both official and private levels had suffered over the past five years.
“It’s a better environment for Hong Kong to make use of the agency that it has, bring its autonomy at full play, organise its messaging and decide what it wants to do as a superconnector,” Tong, now a partner at Washingtonbased business advisory firm The Asia Group, told the panel.
The Hong Kong government should create more opportunities for regular residents to visit the US for the purpose of establishing connections with Americans, he said.
“Reach out and rebuild the bridges. Make [the connection between Hongkongers and Americans] reinforced and even stronger. I think that will be good for the city and for the US-China relationship,” he added.
All three speakers agreed that greater engagement was needed not just at the people-to-people level but also among non-governmental organisations to help Sino-US ties improve.
Tong added a change from merely information-sharing to “outcomes-oriented negotiations” in bilateral talks would further help ties.