Working With the Biden Administration: Opportunities for the EU – Part 4: Realigning the Transatlantic Relationship on China
By Lizza Bomassi and Paul Haenle
Carnegie Europe, January 26

“With a new administration in the White House, there is renewed hope for transatlantic cooperation on China policy despite the sometimes-erratic nature of this relationship. For one, in stark contrast to his predecessor, U.S. President Joe Biden believes that the United States is strongest when it works with its allies. Brussels, for its part, is drafting new proposals to meet the “strategic challenge” posed by China. There is a sense that a revived emphasis on multilateralism presents opportunities for the European Union (EU) and the United States to manage their differences and work with China to resolve fundamental issues in the trilateral relationship.”

“The United States should avoid pressuring its partners in the EU and elsewhere into making binary choices on China. The global economy is too interconnected to revert to the Cold War system of bifurcation, and any attempt to decouple trade ties would risk exacerbating an already fraught trilateral relationship. As such, EU-U.S. efforts to coordinate on China policy should have an eye toward solving problems rather than punishing China or excluding it from international dialogues.”

“If Beijing seeks to manage its relations with Washington and Brussels in a productive manner, it should do so because of the benefits it sees for itself and the international community. Unless Washington, Brussels, and Beijing resolve many of their fundamental disagreements, there is a risk that trilateral ties will only deteriorate further and undermine coordination on the most pressing global challenges.”

China Wanted to Show Off Its Vaccines. It’s Backfiring.
By Sui-Lee Wee
The New York Times, January 25 [Paywall]

“Delays, inconsistent data, spotty disclosures and the country’s attacks on Western rivals have marred its ambitious effort to portray itself as a leader in global health.”

“China’s coronavirus vaccines were supposed to deliver a geopolitical win that showcased the country’s scientific prowess and generosity. Instead, in some places, they have set off a backlash.”

China’s Foreign Policy Weapons: Technology, Coercion, Corruption
By Hal Brands
Bloomberg, January 24

“China’s drive for dominance combines timeless ambitions with 21st-century methods. Look no further than Beijing’s growing quest for spheres of influence. Like countless great powers before it, China aims to shape and control its surroundings. It aspires to create geopolitical domains in which its interests are protected and its prerogatives heeded.”

The US and China Must Cooperate in Space
By Anne-Marie Slaughter and Emily Lawrence
Project Syndicate, January 22

“America and China should cooperate in space. Although the United States can no longer take its extraterrestrial dominance for granted, it remains the leading player, while China’s space capabilities are growing fast. Most important, both countries, along with the rest of the world, would benefit from a set of clear rules governing the exploration and commercialization of space.”

“If the US managed to coordinate with the Soviet Union on space policy during the Cold War, it can find a way to cooperate with China now. The two countries will likely remain at odds on many issues, including trade, cybersecurity, internet governance, democracy, and human rights. But President Joe Biden’s administration must also recognize those areas where cooperation is in America’s best interest. Global threats like pandemics and climate change are obvious examples; setting norms for commercial activities in space is another.”

“This will not be an easy task, given that US-China relations are at their lowest point in decades. But the alternative is bleak. Without an international framework that includes all major spacefaring countries, the Moon could become the next Wild West. China is unlikely to be a responsible partner in a space order that does not afford it the position it deserves. Isolating China could even lead to a territorial clash with the US over prime real estate at the Moon’s south pole, where precious ice reservoirs are thought to be located.”

Three Tensions in Biden’s International Economic Policy
By Matthew P. Goodman
Center for Strategic & International Studies, January 21

“[T]here are three aspects of international economic policy in which President Biden’s impulses appear to pull in conflicting directions. Unless these tensions are reconciled, there is a risk that this important area of policy will get bogged down in the new administration.

1. The first tension is between domestic and international economic priorities.
2. The second tension in Biden’s international economic policy is between the new administration’s aversion to traditional trade negotiations and its desire to reestablish U.S. leadership in the Indo-Pacific region.
3. The third tension is between confronting and engaging with China. President Biden has made clear that he shares the Trump administration’s assessment of China as a strategic competitor of the United States.

To manage this tricky balancing act, the Biden administration should consider reestablishing the informal, high-level channel between senior foreign policy and economic officials in the White House and Zhongnanhai used occasionally during the Obama administration….With strategic perspective and process discipline, the Biden administration should be able to reconcile the three tensions identified here. Without them, there is a risk that international economic policy gets hamstrung by internal contradictions.”

A Complex Inheritance: Transitioning to a New Approach on China
By Scott Kennedy
Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 19

“The incoming Biden administration will inherit four major crises—the pandemic, climate change, racial injustice, and a fracturing political system. It will also face a U.S.-China relationship that is very different from the one President Obama and President-elect Biden bequeathed to the Trump administration four years ago. Figuring out how to manage this inheritance will be the chief foreign policy challenge of the new administration.”

“Although the Trump administration has tried to intentionally handcuff its successors, the Biden administration has substantial flexibility to reshape America’s China policy. Systematically working through this complex inheritance is the necessary first step to going beyond mere tinkering and reactive management. The incoming administration will be able to take some steps on its own, others primarily in consultation with allies, and still others as a process of negotiation with Beijing. There is a large legacy of issues to resolve, but the administration should take its time to consider each individual policy, how they relate to each other, and how retaining, modifying, or jettisoning these measures would dovetail with their own novel initiatives and the broader transition to a distinctive Biden administration approach to China and the world more generally.”

On 1st Anniversary, China Phase One Trade Deal Has Not Aged Well
By Tori K. Smith
The Heritage Foundation, January 15

“After a full year, and as a new administration and Congress assume power, it’s important to evaluate the effectiveness of the deal at achieving its goals. It’s not a pretty picture.”

“The dispute between the U.S. and China came with a hefty price tag. Americans have paid tens of billions in extra taxes to trade with China since 2018, as well as billions of dollars in subsidies to farmers. At the same time, it did nothing to further U.S. strategic objectives.”

“There’s no doubt that the U.S. and China are engaged in strategic competition. The use of punitive tariffs, however, has proven a poor instrument to effect change in China. Americans have been hurt by the trade war with China, and the price of that dispute grows each day. Cutting tariffs should be a key component of Biden’s strategy towards China.”

How Joe Biden’s America and China can turn the page on a rocky relationship
By Stephen Orlins
South China Morning Post, January 14

“US-China relations are at their worst since the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. There is plenty of blame to go around. In China, the centralisation of power under President Xi Jinping and the controversies over human rights in Xinjiang and democracy in Hong Kong have contributed to increasingly negative perceptions of China around the world.”

How America Can Shore Up Asian Order: A Strategy for Restoring Balance and Legitimacy
By Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi
Foreign Affairs, January 12

“Throughout the half century of Asia’s unprecedented rise, Henry Kissinger has been a pivotal figure, orchestrating the United States’ opening to China in the early 1970s and then going on to author tomes on Chinese strategy and world order. But at this transitional moment in Asia, Kissinger’s most relevant observations may be found in a more surprising place: a doctoral dissertation on nineteenth-century Europe that struggled to find a publisher when Kissinger wrote it, years before his rise to prominence.”