Biden does not change American policy towards China

As widely announced in the election campaign, the new American president, Biden, has kept his promises, from the beginning of his mandate, on what level relations with China will take place. The first practical test was the first telephone conversation with the Chinese head of state, Xi Jinping, where the new tenant of the White House expressed all his concerns about Beijing’s behavior both in domestic politics, with repeated violations of human rights, politicians and civilians, who in foreign policy, where China has repeatedly demonstrated, through an aggressive policy, an ever greater will to exert influence in the international context. This line that Biden has adopted does not seem to differ, if not for the different methods of expression, from that held by his predecessor: the choice seems obliged by the difficult relations that continue between the two countries due to the conflicts in commercial and geostrategic matters. Some passages of what was the first conversation between the two politicians, after Biden’s election, were also cordial, as is due to the protocol, but the official statement from the White House at the end of the interview highlighted the concern US for the unfair economic practices in Beijing, the repressions in Hong Kong, the repeated and serious violations of the rights of the Muslim population of the Xinjiang province and the threats to the autonomy of Taiwan. This is a set of arguments that constitute a particularly voluminous dossier for the American administration, which represents a not very surmountable obstacle to normal relations with the Chinese country and which confirms all the difficulties already experienced by Obama and Trump; moreover Biden, having already held the role of vice president, knows these issues well, just as he has known the Chinese president equally well since 2011. Specifically, Biden’s statement that he considers safety, health and lifestyle a priority of the American people and in relation to this to undertake to cooperate with China in relation to how much this satisfies the interests of the USA and its allies, must be read as a sort of warning to Beijing, also due to new relations with the usual allies of the United States, whose relations with Trump had deteriorated. By giving priority to normal transatlantic ties, Washington seems to want to warn the Chinese country that partnerships with Europe for the People’s Republic will never be the same. Biden wants to go back to filling those gaps created by Trump that had allowed China to insinuate itself into relations with European states thanks to its great financial capacity and, if Europe is the first goal to be recovered for the United States, it seems impossible not to think that this direction will also be followed for Asian and African countries, in the former American action will be necessary to contain Chinese expansionism, especially in what it considers its own space of natural influence, in the latter to limit a presence that is already badly tolerated, a detail that allows for a non-secondary insertion space. On the side of bilateral trade relations, precisely because of all these considerations and the negative evaluations about Chinese trade conduct, it is practically certain that the US will maintain trade sanctions against Beijing, at most these sanctions could be used as an exchange to obtain the change of Chinese attitude on specific issues on which it will be possible to deal, in any case problems regarding Chinese conduct in trade and industrial licenses, certainly not matters considered untraceable by Beijing such as the Taiwan question. But on this front there is no room for negotiation even for Washington: one of the first steps of the new American administration was to receive the representative of Taiwan in the USA, a fact that was an unequivocal signal for the Chinese, as well as a novelty. in relations between the two countries. It is precisely on Taiwan that there is the greatest closeness of views between Democrats and Republicans and this constitutes a further argument of importance in the American evaluation of the Taiwan question and determines the argument that could be the most important for understanding the evolution of relations between the USA. and China.