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Joe Biden’s China policy
Opinion
Anthony Rowley
Anthony Rowley

Biden must seek a new balance of equals in Asia to avert a US-China partition

  • China’s massive push into Asia is a reaction to the dominant US presence and close US-Japan ties. To prevent a partitioned Asia, Biden should prioritise US-China-Japan relations instead

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Then US president Donald Trump (left) sits with Japan’s then prime minister Shinzo Abe and China’s President Xi Jinping at the G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, on June 28, 2019. A vision of trilateral cooperation that includes the US, China and Japan would prevent Asia from becoming a theatre of US-China competition. Photo: Kyodo
Anthony Rowley

Rivalry between the United States and China for economic and strategic hegemony in Asia is growing in and beyond the region and within the US itself. Unless the Biden administration shows real statesmanship, the risk of this developing into a US sphere versus a Sino sphere will grow, with damaging or even disastrous consequences.

The enlightenment President Joe Biden is showing on climate change, trade and other issues does not appear to extend yet to improved relations with China. Biden does not wish to appear soft on an “assertive” China and yet this is the very moment for Washington to acknowledge the negative side of its own influence in Asia.
China seems eager for a post-Trump breakthrough in relations with the US. Wang Huiyao, president of the Centre for China and Globalisation in Beijing, for example, has called for “more cooperation, less competition” between the two to reduce the “trust deficit that has developed over the past four years”.
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“There is a need to build more dialogue mechanisms and enhance bilateral and multilateral cooperation,” Wang said. China and the US should build a global anti-pandemic fund and there is “excellent potential” for China and the US to cooperate to tackle climate change as well as in reforming the rules of world trade, he suggests.

Yet within days of Biden taking over from the egregiously divisive Donald Trump, indications are that he will be constrained in how far he can go to achieve rapprochement with China because of polarised views in the US itself and among US allies.

07:49

Joe Biden becomes 46th US president in scaled-down, socially-distanced inauguration

Joe Biden becomes 46th US president in scaled-down, socially-distanced inauguration

History will probably record developments in the coming weeks as an opportunity seized, or missed, for acknowledging the true dynamics driving competition between the world’s two largest economies. This will call for an unwonted degree of heart-searching and humility on the part of America’s new leader.

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