Biden is running out of time to implement his China policy. First he must decide what it is

The US president has made it clear he wants to compete with China, but while his rhetoric has united Democrats and Republicans, it has done little else
With no China expertise within his team or any chance to meet Xi face to face, Biden’s China policy is suffering and his window of opportunity narrowing

Chi Wang

Published: 1:30am, 17 Jan 2022

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Nearly one year into the administration of President Joe Biden, those looking for clarity on the president’s China policy best not hold their breath.

Biden has made clear in virtually every major speech and appearance since his inauguration that China is a key priority for his administration. He has tried to use China as a unifying thread for all his foreign and domestic policy initiatives.

He is driven in part by the recognition that confronting China may be the only thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on. Yet all these references to competing with China are merely a house of cards without a strong or even discernible China policy to back them up.

Biden referenced China during his speech last week marking the anniversary of the January 6 riot at the US Capitol. He said “From China to Russia to beyond, they’re betting that democracy’s days are numbered.” He raised the necessity of working together to counter China in his meetings with Nato and G7 leaders last year and also used the prospect of competing with China to rally support for his ambitious infrastructure bill.

Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen recently praised Biden’s effort to foster an allied approach to China as “refreshingly coherent and competent” and a rare bright spot in a largely disappointing first year.

While consistent messaging on China is certainly an improvement over the Trump era, it hardly counts as a strategy. In fact, Biden’s approach to China thus far consists mostly of question marks.

It took the president nearly seven months to formally nominate his choice for ambassador to China and it took the divided Senate nearly four more months to finally confirm him. The new ambassador, Nicholas Burns, has still not yet assumed his post in Beijing.

The administration announced ongoing reviews of China policy by the US Trade Representative and Department of Defence, but neither have produced much of substance. Many of the Trump-era tariffs remain in effect with no timeline set for removal.

The biggest positive development in US-China relations last year may not have even involved Biden. In September, the US Department of Justice reached a deferred prosecution agreement with Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in which she admitted to misleading US banks on her company’s business in Iran and was allowed to return to China after nearly three years under house arrest in Canada.

In turn, China released two arbitrarily detained Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. The US and Canada celebrated the return of the “two Michaels” and the White House noted that Biden called for their release in a phone call with Xi just weeks earlier.

But it does not appear that Biden was responsible for the resolution of either case. On the contrary, the administration maintained the Justice Department acted without political interference to reach the agreement with Meng and denied any connection with China’s decision to release the Canadians.

Biden is a stated believer in personal diplomacy, but the pandemic and ongoing tensions have limited opportunities for Biden and Xi to engage. Xi has not left China in almost two years, and Biden’s China policy has suffered from being limited to just two phone calls and a virtual summit. With Biden boycotting the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games, it is unclear when or if Biden and Xi will meet in person.

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Xi Jinping and Joe Biden call for mutual respect and peaceful China-US coexistence

I am not surprised that Biden has thus far been an ineffective steward of China policy. In the decades that I worked adjacent to him through my work at the US Library of Congress, I never knew him to be particularly interested in or knowledgeable about China.

And as much as he and his administration have emphasised their concerns on the challenges posed by China, nowhere among his advisers do I see any real China expertise. Neither Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, or even Ambassador Burns have much expertise dealing with China. They are all European experts, which reflects Biden’s priorities in the Atlantic over the Pacific.

Nicholas Burns, shown during Senate hearings on his nomination last October, was finally confirmed as the new US ambassador to China on December 16 2021, but it is unclear when he will assume his post in Beijing. Photo: AFP

It’s also unclear if Biden is consulting any outside experts. Throughout the more than 70 years that I have called the Washington, DC area my home, I have watched successive American presidents and policymakers lean on China scholars to guide their understanding and influence decision-making.

These scholars include some of the most celebrated Sinologists of the 20th century, including John K. Fairbank, A. Doak Barnett, and Ezra Vogel. Even the Trump administration found its own coterie of China experts to consult, including Michael Pillsbury.

Such expertise is harder to come by as the old generation of China experts are dying with no clear successors. Vogel died in December 2020 while completing a review of the China policy he hoped to submit to the Biden team. With interest in studying China declining in the US, and opportunities for Americans to research in China dwindling, the US it setting itself up to be less informed about China when we need such expertise the most.

Will Biden’s election woes affect approach to China?

The outcomes of the looming 2022 midterm elections may determine the fate of the Biden presidency. If Democrats lose their narrow hold on Congress, it will be virtually impossible for the president to pass anything meaningful and he risks becoming a lame duck.

While he maintains that he may yet run for re-election in 2024, I am doubtful that he will ultimately pursue this, considering his age. Thus, the president’s window to implement a meaningful China policy is growing smaller by the day. He needs to actually decide on what his strategy will be before he loses the opportunity entirely.

Chi Wang, a former head of the Chinese section of the US Library of Congress, is president of the US-China Policy Foundation