In his inauguration speech on January 20, US president Joe Biden resolved to “repair our alliances and engage with the world again”. Warmer ties with European NATO allies and rejoining the Paris Climate Accord and World Health Organization are, thus, on the cards. But President Biden’s chief foreign policy challenge will be to counter an increasingly aggressive China under President Xi Jinping—an issue that also invited combative US reaction under the Trump administration.
Indeed, there is bipartisan consensus in the US that a rising China is hoping to displace the US as the world’s foremost power in the following decades. President Trump’s China policy, too, has come in for praise across the political divide. How the Biden administration deals with China will have far-reaching impact on the world.
As China’s neighbour and on the frontline of Chinese assertion—Indian and Chinese forces face each other across the freezing heights of Ladakh—New Delhi will be closely watching developments. Can Biden rein in Xi’s moves to assert Chinese supremacy across Asia? All through the current confrontation, while most world powers, including India’s neighbours, did not come out in support for India, the US government repeatedly called out China and stood solidly behind New Delhi. Can the same be expected of President Biden?
Luckily, Biden is familiar with foreign policy issues and has already reassured America’s NATO allies that the US will resume its role as leader of the free world. In one of his first acts as President, Biden began the process of rejoining the Paris climate pact and the WHO, which Trump had left in a huff in the middle of a global pandemic. As vice president to Barack Obama, Biden was in the loop on all major developments. Earlier, he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But the world has changed drastically since then. China now is much more assertive than it was during the Obama years, as an empowered President Xi looks to establish China’s dominance.
Instead of soft-peddling on issues as previous presidents had done, Trump took China head on and succeeded in focusing on how Beijing had consistently refused to play by the rules, whether in trade practices or in its pugnacity across the Indo-Pacific. Europeans, initially reluctant to take on China, mainly because of thriving economic ties, are gradually waking up to the reality of China’s plans on world dominance.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s parting shot for China, a day before he left office, was to accuse the Chinese Communist Party of genocide against Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang. “The forced assimilation and eventual erasure of a vulnerable ethnic and religious minority group,” Pompeo declared, “amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity.” While the world was aware of the ruthless suppression of Uighurs, dubbing it as ‘genocide’ has raised stakes and was aimed to ramp up pressure on Beijing. Earlier, the US had banned imports of tomatoes and cotton grown in Xinjiang, saying these were products of forced labour. In fact, Antony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state, in apparent agreement with Pompeo, did not question the ‘genocide’ label.
Not all would concur with the ‘genocide’ term, yet there is incontrovertible evidence that Uighurs are brutally suppressed by Chinese authorities. Reports of forcible sterilisation drives and abortions of Uighur women to limit the Muslim population as well as sending men to ‘deradicalisation’ camps have been known for years. If the Biden government wishes to take on China on human rights, a resolution on the Uighur issue could be up before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Trump had walked out of it, but Biden, with his faith in multilateral institutions, will certainly rejoin the council.
As expected, a furious China said Pompeo’s statement was a “crazy move”. Beijing imposed sanctions on Pompeo and 27 Americans in retaliation and decreed that they would not be allowed to do business with Chinese companies or set foot in China.
Again, the outgoing Trump administration had also lifted restrictions on diplomatic contacts with Taiwan, something the Chinese—who claim Taiwan as their territory—have always been sensitive to. Successive US governments, for fear of angering China, had been soft on the issue. Stuck with these last-minute hard-hitting orders on China, the new US government might find it difficult to rescind these, unlike the slew of unpopular executive orders struck down by Biden.
“I think the rhetoric will not be as sharp; there will be lack of unpredictability and there will be greater coordination with European allies, but the essence of the Trump policy on China will remain,” says Arun Singh, a former Indian diplomat.
Singh is right. While Trump acted alone against China, the Biden administration will get the Europeans on board and work in unison to ensure that China does not flout the rules laid down by the international community. The pushback against President Xi’s policies is likely to become more effective and as Singh points out, will avoid the name-calling perfected by Trump’s team. After a torrid four years marked by slanging matches, China, too, is looking forward to better relations under the Biden administration. But the president will be under enormous pressure from progressives within his own party to call out China on human rights.
For India there will be no drastic change—Democrat and Republican presidents have worked to advance ties between the world’s oldest and most populous democracies. Successive US administrations, starting from those of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to Barack Obama and Trump, were on the same page on India. The idea is to balance China’s rising power by shoring up another major Asian country. The signing of the four foundational defence agreements between India and the US will lead to greater defence cooperation between the two countries. Biden will be as interested as Trump in closer military cooperation with India. New Delhi and Washington both regard China’s unfettered rise in Asia as a strategic challenge to peace and security in the region. While no major change is expected in India-US ties under Biden, there may be tweaks.
Much depends on how Biden deals with China. “It is too early to say which way US-China relations will go,’’ says strategic analyst Srikanth Kondapalli, professor of Chinese Studies at JNU. “So far there are mixed signals,” he adds. He believes that China will make overtures to the Biden administration and the new president will respond favourably as he attempts to repair a US economy pulverised by the pandemic. China is hoping that the Biden White House will focus attention on Russia, which the US establishment regards as a major adversary.
However, in the South China Sea the administration is taking a tough stand. The Biden administration has sent out aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, accompanied by three warships, to patrol its waters. For its part, China violated Taiwanese airspace by sending in eight bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons, four fighter jets, and one anti-submarine aircraft on January 23. It repeated the assault on Taiwan’s airspace the next day. It is not known if the Chinese airplanes were reacting to Biden’s move—the signal is that the US will continue to be a major player in the Indo-Pacific. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, responding to the US mission, told reporters, “The United States frequently sends aircraft and vessels into the South China Sea to flex its muscles. This is not conducive to peace and stability in the region…” Not much seems to have changed on the South China Sea narrative.
