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Why China should try to keep Donald Trump happy
- The US national security adviser’s recent statements indicate that an anti-China stance will persist regardless of whether Trump is re-elected
- Trump’s criticism of US protesters and his abandonment of some of his former allies suggests Beijing will find a kindred spirit in him
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
When US President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, discussed China with the Atlantic Council’s Paula Dobriansky last week, he let slip something unusual for an administration that otherwise projects nothing but confidence about its chances for a second term.
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“Whether [Trump] has a successor in a few months or in a few years, we’re leading the way so that America can stand up to China and maintain our way of life and defend against these pernicious attacks,” he said, referring to militarisation of the South China Sea, assaults on Hong Kong’s democracy activists, intellectual property theft and multiple other areas in which Washington and Beijing are clashing.
From China’s perspective, the significance isn’t so much in O’Brien’s acknowledgement that a second Trump term is far from assured as much as his overall thesis about the determination of the US to counter Beijing’s internationally disputed claim to nearly the entire South China Sea.
O’Brien didn’t stop at calling the claim “ridiculous”. He cast Washington’s resolve to keep the South China Sea international territory as part of a seven-decade resistance to “Stalinist” authoritarianism, specifically calling out Russia and China as the world’s chief antagonists in this continuing struggle.
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Explained: the history of China’s territorial disputes
Explained: the history of China’s territorial disputes
The comments were as much a rebuke of his boss’ attempts to boost Russian President Vladimir Putin’s standing on the world stage as they were of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s determination to plant the Chinese flag on everything within the nine-dash line, including Taiwan.
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