Opinion

US-China relations: Biden’s America must evolve beyond old ideas with bigger guns

Name: US-China relations: Joe Biden would approach China with more ‘regularity and normality’
Uploaded: 2020-11-30T17:00:12.000Z
Duration: 6 min 4 s
Description: US-China relations: Joe Biden would approach China with more ‘regularity and normality’

Mutual demonisation has no place in China-US diplomacy and will produce nothing good. Patriotism without modulation on both sides could trigger a chain of events that eludes the control of their manipulators

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Lightning flashes over the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Nimitz as it transits the South China Sea on July 4. Photo: Reuters

Tom Plate

Tom Plate is a university professor and a veteran columnist focused on Asia and America.

Published: 1:00am, 1 Dec 2020Updated: 1:19am, 1 Dec 2020

The filling of key policy positions in the incoming Biden administration proceeds apace. So far, though, none of the announced or expected top-level appointees offer particular savvy or expertise about Beijing.

The designated Biden secretary of state is Antony Blinken, whose career competence and sensible style will prove refreshing and might someday even blur memories in foreign capitals of his predecessor Mike Pompeo. But as close as this likeable diplomat is to Biden – and closeness is an enormous asset – Blinken has no pretensions of being some Sino-superman in a China cape.

He will need all the help on China he can get, and as soon as he can get it. America’s top diplomat will find himself pulled in many international directions, especially at the start. China, representing 18 per cent of the global population and 32 per cent of Asia’s, is a whale of a challenge. The country’s ambitious Communist Party takes few prolonged naps.

Right away, the incoming administration would help itself greatly by designating a special super-coordinator for China or even create a new position of China tsar. This would charge some capable figure with sorting out the maddening bilateral matrix, with all its military, diplomatic, economic and human rights issues that can spin the relationship into infinite regress.

Ideally, this person would be neither a panda hugger nor a panda strangler. They certainly should be fluent in Mandarin and preferably have served as a foreign service officer on the mainland. They should be of a quality to deserve everyone’s respect, including Beijing’s.

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US-China relations: Joe Biden would approach China with more ‘regularity and normality’

To get the ball rolling, a current high-ranking career official could be vetted. American intelligence expert Greg Treverton, whose extensive career includes service as chairman of the National Intelligence Council in the Obama administration, imagines a scenario in which the China coordinator would be situated near the secretary of state in a re-energised State Department: “One easy way would be to make ‘P’ dual-hatted as the China coordinator. Of course, being located in State would have some downsides, but the fate of most rootless tsars is that they become, as I say, tsardines.” “P” is Washington lingo for the high-ranking post of undersecretary of state for political affairs.