Where Trump and Biden Stand on China - WSJ

Mr. Trump has charted a more confrontational China policy than his Republican and Democratic predecessors pursued in the four decades since Washington and Beijing set up full diplomatic relations. What began as a fight over trade has evolved into  a multi-front assault  with the U.S. targeting China’s tech companies, its alleged theft of research and intellectual property and its officials involved in jailing Muslim ethnic groups and thwarting democracy in Hong Kong.

Advisers to Mr. Biden say they share the Trump administration’s assessment of China as an authoritarian rival intent on disrupting the American-led global order. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden have in the past publicly boasted of having a personal connection with President Xi Jinping. And both now say their views on China have soured. Each campaign has produced video ads accusing the opposing candidate of being weak-kneed on China.

A Biden administration  is likely to maintain efforts  started by Mr. Trump to reduce American dependence on Chinese manufacture of critical goods and to compete with China in strategic sectors such as artificial intelligence and next-generation 5G wireless networks.

A core part of Mr. Trump’s trade war with China—tariffs that cover roughly three-quarters of everything China sells to the U.S.—is likely to remain, at least in the early part of a Biden administration.

Unlike Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden is committed to diplomacy, in keeping with his decades helping to mold the global order Mr. Trump often criticizes. Mr. Biden aims to work closely with allies, mobilizing them to counter Beijing’s expanding global influence. He also says he will work with China to address global issues like  the coronavirus pandemic  and climate change.

That emphasis marks an essential distinction between Mr. Biden’s and Mr. Trump’s approaches to China. “The analysis—and some pushback measures—would be the same,” said Winston Lord, a former ambassador to China under President Reagan and assistant secretary of state under President Clinton. The focus on allies, promoting democracy and competing with China in other ways, said Mr. Lord, means Biden “policies would not look a lot like Trump’s.”

Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden both say they want to build up American manufacturing and lessen what they see as U.S. reliance on China, especially in sectors deemed vital to national security and competitiveness.

A brief second-term agenda released by the Trump campaign promises to lure 1 million manufacturing jobs from China to the U.S. by offering tax credits to American companies. More generous terms are proposed for businesses in sectors like pharmaceuticals and robotics—areas also favored in Biden campaign proposals.

Mr. Trump has suggested that his first-term agenda is a prelude to a “decoupling” from China, meaning a thorough separation of the two economies. Biden aides, on the other hand, say a broader rupture makes no sense beyond key sectors.

The Biden platform often invokes the challenge of China as a spur to bolstering the American economy by ramping up spending on infrastructure, clean energy, worker training and research and development.

On trade, Mr. Biden has said he won’t join trade agreements without first helping American workers. That is likely to include the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the Obama administration negotiated and Mr. Trump rejected, at least early in a Biden administration.

A second Trump term, meanwhile, could see the president pursue a follow-up agreement to  the Phase One trade deal  concluded in January. That deal centered on Chinese pledges to increase purchases of U.S. goods and services. Left out were thornier issues the Trump administration originally wanted Beijing to address, including subsidies for state-owned companies and data security.

Technology will remain a point of friction and competition no matter the president.

A signal Trump administration effort has been to brand Chinese technology companies as threats to national security, accusing them of working with or being beholden to China’s ruling Communist Party.

A threatened ban on the Chinese short-video app TikTok forced its parent company to  change its structure  to continue to operate in the U.S. Huawei Technologies, the world’s largest telecommunications gear maker and a leader in 5G, has been effectively barred from much of the U.S. market and blacklisted from receiving U.S. technology. The Trump administration  has lobbied allied countries  to uproot Huawei gear from their networks.

A “clean network” initiative expected to get a boost in a second Trump term  seeks to exclude  a wider array of Chinese internet and telecoms firms from internet and communications infrastructure used by the U.S. and other countries.

The Biden campaign platform also promises to maintain the U.S. lead in technology and to confront Beijing’s efforts to erode that edge, through cyberattacks, forced technology transfers and luring American-trained scientists to work in China.

Biden aides point to Beijing’s Made in China 2025—an ambitious program to develop technologies of the future like biomedicine and clean energy—as a rationale for the U.S. to guide government investment into fields and sectors seen as competitively key.

The Trump administration identified China as a strategic competitor, and senior officials  have publicly criticized  what they see as Beijing’s malign intentions in world affairs, from cyber espionage to checkbook diplomacy. Mr. Trump has called out China for unleashing the coronavirus pandemic.

The Trump administration has stepped up U.S. military activities in the South China Sea, challenging China’s building of artificial islands and effort to strengthen control over the strategic waters. Allies Japan and Australia have been enlisted, and with them, the Trump administration has pushed for what it calls an Indo-Pacific region free of Chinese aggression.

Biden advisers say that Mr. Trump has undermined this by quarreling with allies over trade and military spending. They point to the Trump administration’s withdrawal from international organizations like the World Health Organization and a multinational pact on Iran’s nuclear program as weakening U.S. leadership. A Biden presidency would seek to rejoin many of these arrangements.

Mr. Biden promises to place greater emphasis on promoting democracy and human rights in dealing with China.

At times, Mr. Trump, as he sought to strike a trade deal, appeared to hold off criticizing Beijing over its crackdown on democratic advocacy in Hong Kong and its mass detention of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang. In recent months, the administration  has moved to penalize Beijing , placing sanctions on officials enforcing policies in those regions.