What is the upcoming Biden administration going to do with the current U.S.-China relationship? Speculations and analyses have focused on the differences between President-elect Biden and President Trump in terms of their approach to China. Aside from assessing Biden’s good will, it is equally worth assessing the president-elect’s capability of improving the U.S.-China relationship within a rather short period of time.

It would be legendary, albeit daydreaming, to expect the president-elect to reset the bilateral relationship. A more realistic expectation is to see Biden bring professional diplomacy and channels of engagement back to U.S. foreign policy. This would allow Beijing and Washington to resume candid dialogue to start repairing what has been damaged by Trump over the last four years, to find common ground on contentious issues related to security and human rights, and to facilitate a crisis prevention mechanism to allow both countries and the world to avoid another tragedy from an uncooperative U.S.-China relationship. In the current state, the bilateral relationship needs to be re-anchored and stabilized in order to bide time for both countries to restore confidence and trust and commence their cooperation in a new era.

U-Turning an Aircraft Carrier

Can President-elect Biden repair the U.S.-China relationship which was badly damaged over the past four years under the Trump Administration? Will he? The discussion following Biden’s historic victory mostly focused on the latter question. President Trump’s approach to China, with the vague goal being to “out-China China” has gradually sabotaged the international norms and, in some cases, prioritized hurting over solving the issues. This is likely to change under the Biden administration. The president-elect’s long career of serving on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and past engagement with China as Obama’s right-hand man will inevitably bring a more professional approach to the interaction between Washington and Beijing. Moreover, Biden’s rather flexible position on some of the less-critical issues would provide opportunity for a conversation. Analyses that focused on Biden’s past and present legislative and policy positions on China have found that the president-elect has not always been wedded to specific positions on economic, societal, and security issues with China. This could help Biden have a ‘fresh start’ with China in order to cooperate over some of the issues at the top of his agenda, such as climate change.

However, there is also a preliminary but fundamental question to be asked: Can Joe Biden help improve the relationship and potentially reset the relationship back to the pre-Trump normalcy? Expectations from both the United States and China should be adjusted based on the assessment of Biden’s resource and strategic prioritization. Biden’s resources are limited. The time limit is one significant factor to consider. Even if the president-elect decided to make a difference with a full four-year period as a ‘transitional’ president, he has too much on his plate to prioritize China policy-making above other foreign and domestic issues. On the domestic front, the fighting against the novel coronavirus pandemic alone could take at least a year, which means the president-elect would have to spend most of his effort dealing with public health issues and the economic challenges that follow. On the international front, Biden has committed to rejoining the Paris accord and reestablishing global American leadership through other multilateral efforts such as the Summit for Democracy. Given their high complexity and sensitivity, there is little space left for the president-elect to tackle the fundamental trade, human rights and security issues which have troubled the bilateral relationship over the past four years.

President-elect Biden is also entering the field with limited political resources to undo or ameliorate the damage done by his predecessor. These include the withdrawal of CDC experts from China, the closing of the consulates in Houston and Chengdu, and the visa ban that has targeted select Chinese graduate students and researchers. Each of these wounds would take both time and diplomatic interactions to heal. ‘Face politics’ too makes a difference. Diplomats from both countries would struggle with who takes the first step to initiate the confidence-building process and get the ball rolling. Moreover, it would be almost impossible for the president-elect to completely halt some of the recent developments on fundamental issues that have catalyzed the freefall of the bilateral relationship, such as on the South China Sea issue. Furthermore, the president-elect’s prioritization of democracy and international democracy-building will initiate new turbulence between Beijing and Washington, given known disagreements in the past. 

In a sense then, it is almost impossible for Biden to completely reset the bilateral relationship and both Washington and Beijing should not employ unrealistic expectations that seek a complete U-turn of the bilateral relationship. Even if Biden were to successfully turn the bilateral relationship during his presidency, it would be like u-turning an aircraft carrier operating at high speed, which requires a powerful engine and inevitably faces and creates countless currents in the process.

Anchor the Bilateral Relationship

A more realistic expectation on the part of President-elect Biden would be to anchor the bilateral relationship more judiciously, so as to begin the process of healing some of the wounds inflicted over the past four years. Foremost, a mechanism needs to be established to facilitate a consensus on agreeing to disagree on some of the fundamental issues dividing China and the United States. The current U.S.-China relationship is unprecedented. The coexistence of elements of cooperation and competition is pervasive across every domain where the two countries interact. And the president-elect has himself also noted that while such “competition” between China and the U.S. is inevitable, “competition can only be mutually beneficial if the rules of the game are understood, agreed upon and followed.” With neither strategic competition nor disagreements resolvable within four or eight years, Beijing and Washington need to find a means to ‘agree to disagree’ in order to ‘kick the can down the road’ on contested issues so that they can re-establish habits of cooperation on other issues.

Crucial in this regard, then, is the establishment of a crisis-prevention mechanism that identifies and tackles the serious consequences brought about by a potential global or bilateral crisis. The coronavirus pandemic is tragic evidence of the negative impact of such a noncooperative U.S.-China relationship. The foundation—and central goal—of such a mechanism is to keep the overall bilateral relationship on a relatively steady keel. This requires both parties to maintain and expand upon the various channels of communication that have gradually been terminated over recent years. ‘Red lines’ need to be drawn, and disagreements should not be ignored in order to construct the common basis for coordinated crisis prevention. These channels of communication would serve as an stabilizing anchor for the bilateral relationship and prevent it from drifting away by the emerging currents. Both Biden and Beijing will need to display goodwill and patience for such a crisis-prevention mechanism to be constructed, and thereby give their bilateral relationship a chance to start healing and stabilizing for the betterment of their citizens.

Yilun Zhang is a Research Associate at the Institute for China-America Studies