Joe Biden hasn’t even made it into the White House and China has already chosen to come forward to talk trash.
The relationship between the United States and China has been slowly falling apart.
China has been maintaining that relations will improve nearly instantly once Biden heads into the White House. However, this is not necessarily the case – and they need to be prepared for a tough, united front from Washington.
The Dean of the Advanced Institute of Global and Contemporary China Studies, Zheng Yongnian, has urged the Chinese government to mend ties with the US.
Why? As Mr. Zheng said during an interview while attending the Understanding China Conference, “The good old days are over…the Cold War hawks in the US have been in a highly mobilized state for several years, and they will not disappear overnight.”
There’s bipartisan consensus in the United States that China must be contained.
However, Mr. Zheng believes that Biden may take advantage of how the public resents China. He claims that American society is torn apart and that Biden can’t do anything about it.
“He is certainly a very weak president.” There we have it. Mr. Zheng doesn’t believe that Biden is up to the task of sorting out domestic issues. It is because of his inability to sort out the domestic issues that Zheng feels Biden will turn to do something about China.
Trump wasn’t interested in war…but perhaps Biden would be? That is the fear that is currently traveling through China.
While Trump was in office, relations with China have only gotten worse. This has to do with not only COVID-19 but also trade wars and human rights. Was it Trump that caused the relations to go south? Not really. They have headed that way anyway because of China releasing the virus, the way that they treat labor within their factories, and a long list of other things that the Communist country does that does not sit well with democratic countries.
Trump was simply honest with China. He held nothing back when talking to them and showing his dismay.
Will Biden be able to do anything to improve the relations? Maybe, maybe not.
The question we really have to ask is if we want to improve relations. Do we want to make friends with China? What can they offer us?
There have been hundreds of bills drafted by Congress that target China – and many of them share bipartisan support. Many address the catastrophes in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
Chinese foreign policy experts believe that tensions will continue during the Biden administration. They are right to believe that.
During Biden’s campaign, he showed that he had big plans to call China out for some of their repressive policies. However, he did it in a way that made people really question whether he is as weak as Chinese advisors believe that he is.
Biden has called President Xi Jinping a “thug.” Really? That’s the best that Biden could come up with? So, now, the United States is about to inaugurate a president who recently called the Chinese president a thug.
Perhaps they’re right. He’s very weak.
What we need to be sure of is that they don’t see Biden’s weakness as a weakness on behalf of all Americans. We’re a democracy. Biden is only one piece of the puzzle. He may be the president, but we have a bipartisan Congress that will take the lead if and when it’s necessary. We also have a military that is prepared to carry out any aggressive strike that needs to be made to show that the United States is most certainly not weak.
It’s almost as if China doesn’t want to improve relations. Zheng has said that he hopes the Biden administration will meet China halfway. What that even looks like is anyone’s guess. Calling the new president “very weak,” however, isn’t a great start to improving relations, regardless of how right they might be.
