Trump and China on collision course
TEHRAN (Basirat)- In speaking on the telephone with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen and lashing out at China on Twitter over the weekend, President-elect Donald Trump did more than bewilder leaders in Beijing and the White House.
In speaking on the telephone with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen and lashing out at China on Twitter over the weekend, President-elect Donald Trump did more than bewilder leaders in Beijing and the White House.
He made clear that he’s serious about his vows to wring a new deal from China on trade and appears to be ready to challenge at least the atmospherics of the US relationship with Taiwan — an issue of deep sensitivity in Beijing.
His tactics also show that President
Trump promises to be just as much of a disruptor in international
relations as he has been in domestic politics, no matter what
conventions get broken in the process.
But so far, analysts say, it is not
clear that Trump — for all his bombast — is preparing to tear up the
strategic framework that has underpinned Sino-US relations since
President Richard Nixon went to China to open relations between the two
countries four decades ago.
Trump’s inexperience in foreign affairs
and the fact that he is yet to name a secretary of state or senior Asia
policy team means there is uncertainty in Washington and across the
Pacific about his intentions.
China watchers are trying to work out if
the call with Tsai is a sign that Trump is ready to challenge the
strategic ambiguity of the "One China” policy itself that has been the
cornerstone of bilateral relations since the establishment of diplomatic
relations.
The formula, enshrined in the documents
that eventually led to the establishment of US relations with China,
permits Beijing to regard Taiwan as a part of China and the United
States to sell the nationalist island arms to defend itself against the
mainland, and has headed off a major US-China clash over the issue.
Trump’s call with Tsai was initially
described by the presidential transition as a courtesy call. But now his
supporters suggest that the first reported direct contact between a
president or a president-elect with a Taiwanese leader in 40 years was
more significant.
"Taiwan is our ally,” former Trump
economic adviser Stephen Moore said in a radio interview Monday on the
Big John and Ray Show on WLS AM890. "That is a country that we have
backed because they believe in freedom. We ought to back our ally, and
if China doesn’t like it, screw ’em.”
Reince Priebus, Trump’s pick to be his chief of staff, said Monday that Moore is not an adviser for Trump’s transition.
But the diplomatic balance over Taiwan
is so delicate that some analysts fear Trump could be starting a
confrontation that could easily spin out of control, endanger other
crucial areas of the US-China relationship and even so hike tensions
that a military clash is possible in the Pacific.
"I think that until the inauguration,
China is unlikely to let this escalate with the President-elect,” said
Jessica Chen Weiss, a China expert at Cornell University.”After January
20, I think all bets are off.”
"China would be willing to sacrifice
cooperation across the board to stand firm against any move to give
Taiwan diplomatic recognition and undermine the "One China policy,”
according to Weiss.
What is Trump’s strategy?
When news broke of Trump’s conversation Friday with Tsai, many foreign policy experts simply chalked it up to a rookie error.
But after Trump hit back on Twitter by
pointing out the seemingly illogical convention that will give him power
as president to sell arms to Taiwan but not talk to its leader, the
consensus began to shift.
When Trump returned to Twitter over the
weekend to accuse China of devaluing its currency and building a
"massive military complex” in the South China Sea, it became clear that
he was making a tough initial gambit in his unfolding relationship with
Chinese President Xi Jinping.
"He wants to negotiate a new deal with
China. Obviously this call does what he said he is going to do. He wants
to shake up China,” said Michael Pillsbury, an author and China expert
who has advised Trump and called him a "strategic genius.”
"He is going to be firm and he is
reminding them we need to have a talk now (between) Beijing and
Washington,” Pillsbury said on CNN Monday.
Trump’s attitude mirrors a recent
Foreign Policy article written by two other advisers — Peter Navarro and
Alexander Gray — that was seen widely as a blueprint for his upcoming
China strategy.
The authors warned that President Barack
Obama’s Asia pivot, partly conceived to cope with the rise of China,
was a case of talking loudly but "carrying a small stick.”
Trump, they suggested, would adopt a
policy of "peace through strength,” vastly expanding the US Navy to
respond more robustly to Chinese territorial claims in the East and
South China Seas and make clear that American interests in the region
would be paramount.
Patrick Cronin, a senior director at the
Center for A New American Security, said that Trump was intent on
demonstrating to China that its rising power would not be met by an
atrophying United States.
"What Trump is doing is to try to create
new leverage, new maneuvering room in what is going to be a protracted
complex negotiating position with China,” said Cronin, who backed
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. "This move
signals early on that he is capable of coloring outside the lines on
US-China relations, not just in domestic policy. "
China’s response
Some commentators have argued that China
sees Trump’s presidency as an opportunity. His decision to cancel the
Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is seen as playing into Beijing’s
hopes of establishing its own economic order in the region, since the
massive US-led trade deal cut out the Asian superpower.
Trump’s campaign trail warnings that
Japan and South Korea must do more to pay for their US defense umbrella
were also interpreted as presaging a US retreat from the region.
But China might be taking another look at Trump after this weekend.
Beijing’s initial response to Trump’s
call with Tsai was sophisticated — restating the importance of the "One
China policy” but also giving Trump and his team the benefit of the
doubt by blaming Taiwan for initiating the call.
Such a strategy suggests that Beijing
could expect that the new US president will initially have a contentious
relationship with China — as has happened in the past — before the
logic of the wider relationship eases tensions.
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin
Rudd, a longtime China-watcher, said Beijing had made a decision not to
play into Trump’s hands.
"I think we are in for at least a couple of months of general uncertainty,” Rudd told CNN’s Richard Quest on Monday.
"The Chinese response still is this is a
shake-down period — perhaps President Trump is pushing us and probing
us. Perhaps he is seeking to obtain some negotiating chips,” he
suggested they’re saying, "but we are not going to rise to the bait.”
However, Beijing also sent clear signs —
through a Global Times editorial, often a conduit for Communist Party
thought — that if Trump was spoiling for a fight, he could be biting off
more than he can chew.
"No matter what the reasons are behind
Trump’s outrageous remarks, it appears inevitable that Sino-US ties will
witness more troubles in his early time in the White House than any
other predecessor,” the Times said. "We must be fully prepared, both
mentally and physically, for this scenario.”
If it comes to it, China could make life difficult for the Trump administration.
It could refuse to help slow the nuclear
program of close ally North Korea, impose tariffs on US goods or make
it more difficult for American businesses to operate in China. Weiss
said Beijing could also hold military maneuvers to show the US and
Taipei "that China’s resolve is unshaken.”
Trump’s critics are puzzled why he would
open his relationship with China by initiating a clash over Taiwan and
then doubling down.
"Some of the progress we have made in
our relationship with China could be undermined by this issue flaring
up,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest warned.
Christopher Hill, a former assistant
secretary of state, said that the "One China” policy was successful and
did not need fixing.
"It’s not an issue, it works, it is not
among the list of the terrible problems in East Asia,” Hill told CNN
International’s Hala Gorani.
"If we start going after things that are
not a problem, I think that some of these problems that we have for
which we need US-China cooperation, if you will, we are going to find it
tougher and tougher to work with the Chinese,” he continued.
No consensus in Washington
Still, there is no consensus in Washington that Trump really wants to throw the foundations of US-China policy out the window.
Walter Lohman, a former Republican
Senate policy aide who is now director of Asian Studies at the Heritage
Foundation, said that both sides remain committed to the basic
post-Nixon era framework of US-China relations.
"I could see tensions increasing, but
all within the framework,” he said. "They definitely want to preserve
it, and I think right now, they are calculating that we want to do the
same.”
Republican Rep. Matt Salmon, chairman of
the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific once
lived in Taiwan and has been to China more than 50 times, and said he
saw no risk to the "One China Policy.”
Asked on CNN whether Taiwan could cause a military clash between the US and China, he added: "Not at all.”
"I think that the Chinese understand how important we are to their economic success,” Salmon said on CNN.
Despite the uproar, it’s too early to panic about the state of US-China relations under Trump, according to Rudd.
"Let’s not proclaim cataclysm on the basis of a tweet or two, or four or six,” he said.
