Tempest Trump: China and US urged to make plans for ‘major storm’ in bilateral relationship
Two countries ‘more deeply suspicious of each other than ever before’
Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president has injected unprecedented uncertainty into China-US relations, with diplomatic pundits warning that leaders in Beijing and Washington need to have contingency plans in place to deal with soaring risks and unforeseeable events that could throw bilateral ties into crisis and inflict collateral damage on other parts of the world.
“There is little doubt that a major storm is gathering,” said Pang Zhongying, a professor of international affairs at Beijing’s Renmin University. “Both sides appear to have made few discernible efforts to hide the fact that they expect a rough ride ahead for bilateral ties.”
Throughout his election campaign, Trump accused China of unfair trade practices and vowed to levy a flat 45 per cent tariff on all Chinese imports to the US. Since his surprise election victory, he has sparred with China on a range of security and economic issues, from currency manipulation to Taiwan, the South China Sea and North Korea.
Robert Daly, director of the Washington-based Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, said the potential for wild-card events to shape US-China relations had grown.
While most people in both countries had viewed the other country negatively since 2014, top US and Chinese leaders had seen each other primarily through an adversarial lens, he said, for different reasons and with different styles.
“So this is a new situation when the public has a negative view and leaders have a negative view,” Daly said. “The global situation is more uncertain than it’s been and there’s a competition for leadership [between the two countries].”