By Nnanda Kizito Sseruwagi
One of the most significant and highly complex bilateral relationships in the world today is the diplomatic relationship between the United States and China. Over the years of changing administrations and presidents, China might have come to the conclusion that US-China strategic competition is to endure, almost in similar characteristics, irrespective of who swings in the chair in the Oval Office. But certainly, Donald Trump is a president characteristically like no other. Despite the structural interests of US foreign policy that would make it predictable regardless of who the president is, there is room to analyse what Trump’s second presidency would hold out for China-US relations.
For the two countries and the entire world, cooperation between each other is paramount, lest we would have devastating implications altogether as a globe. Mismanaging China-US relations could potentially yield consequences of historically unprecedented proportions.
President Trump and President Xi Jinping’s characters are important to this analysis because of the person-centeredness of foreign policy action. Trump, and all his “isms” carries ambiguities in his foreign policy approach, and generally lacks structured placement of administrative thought to predict him as likely to hold a certain standard. His worldview is often described as transactional and business-oriented based on his entrepreneurial background. On the other hand, Xi is a man of calm, perceptive and grounded thought. He has written deeply and broadly about his world view; his commitment to a shared future for mankind, and his determination to ensure peaceful co-existence with all countries – big or small. Xi Jinping is unprejudiced by any personal political biases. His clarity of the kind of future for mankind is not selfish for China only as Trump’s is on “America First.”
In his first term, Trump pursued quite a confrontational foreign policy towards China. He rejected the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Obama had reached with China. He waged an unprecedented tariff war against Chinese exports, negatively impacting the US’s own economy. He attempted to halt the development of Huawei’s 5G network for allegedly being a means of Chinese cyberaggression, among many other policies that caused deep friction between China-US relations.
Based on the foreign policy mistakes of the first Trump presidency, it seems he was genuinely ignorant of the reasonable fact that cooperation between the USA and China, as the world’s two largest economies, is fundamental to collective global stability.
The theory of realism is key in foreign policy analysis. It states that the state is the main unitary actor and rational actor seeking to maximize and expand its national interest and objectives, usually from the standpoint of promoting international security. The wisdom Trump requires in his second term is how to pursue the US national interests and ambitions without provoking China with the same confrontation and hostility he exhibited in his first term.
Trump and the West should make peace with a multipolar world and resist the urge to slow down the progress of countries like China and force them to respect American priorities. That world—the world where such a possibility resides—may still linger in the imagination of Western leaders, but it is now behind us.
The future of global stability is in win-win cooperation which is championed by President Xi, not President Trump’s worldview of a zero-sum approach to bilateral relations. I do not see why it should burden Western leaders to embrace Xi’s vision of the global community as sharing a common destiny where all nations benefit from cooperating instead of seeking global domination. The ideological differences between the USA and China are becoming clearer to the world audience and more nations are starting to prefer China’s ideological policy standpoints and reading through the selfishness and unsustainability of the American self-righteous belief systems.
A state cannot have a sound foreign policy if it sits on a shaky domestic public policy. This was one of Trump’s undoings in the first term, and if he did not learn his lessons, might come to haunt him again. If his second term is also punctuated by weaknesses in domestic policy and scuffles with democrats, China is likely to enjoy more productive foreign policy. Xi Jinping is a popular leader at home and the Chinese Communist Party enjoys resounding appeal, is well-organised and disciplined. The more Trump will likely pull ropes with democrats at home, the more likely China’s Belt and Road Initiative will expand as China enjoys stability at home and respect abroad.
If Trump continues pursuing his isolationist agenda full-throttle as he did in the first term, he is likely to benefit China by driving the US’ traditional allies, especially the European Union, towards China. Many American and EU companies are already highly dependent on China’s high-scale, high-precision manufacturing prowess. In further pursuing decoupling from China, Trump will be glueing the EU economically tighter with China, because there will be less diversion of Chinese trade from the EU to the US.
So, Trump needs to understand that the EU lacks an inherent and plausible interest in geostrategically containing China. It is rather in their interest to harness a reciprocal primarily economic and technological interdependency with China based on reciprocity and jointly agreed-upon principles and rules.
Above all, as stated earlier, Trump and the Western world generally need to embrace the changes happening globally. The world is inclined towards multipolarity. The political ideologies of Western nations need to change shape, from the traditional neocolonial obsession with their own way of doing things and controlling the world to a more respectful one, like China’s commitment to peaceful co-existence and mutual respect for all the world’s nations.
The writer is a Senior Research Fellow at the Development Watch Center.
