Joe Biden presidency could reopen a window of opportunity for China: analysts

Name: ‘Welcome back America’: world leaders react to Joe Biden’s victory in US elections
Uploaded: 2020-11-29T14:00:16.000Z
Duration: 4 min 35 s
Description: ‘Welcome back America’: world leaders react to Joe Biden’s victory in US elections

US-China relations can be turned around to prevent a new cold war, according to Chinese strategists and advisers

Beijing should prolong the opportunity as long as possible by improving external relations, they say

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Beijing should engage with the incoming administration of US president-elect Joe Biden, Chinese advisers say. Photo: Reuters

Catherine Wong

Published: 10:00pm, 29 Nov 2020Updated: 10:00pm, 29 Nov 2020

Twenty years ago, Chinese leaders and strategists determined that the first decades of the new millennium would give China a “period of strategic opportunity” that would allow the country to grow its economy in a relatively benign external security environment.

America’s focus on the “war on terror” and China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 created a window of opportunity to enjoy double-digit growth, they said. The 2008 US financial crisis only reaffirmed that assessment, as Beijing seized on the opportunity to grow its economic clout and later emerged as the world’s second-largest economy.

But the four turbulent years of the Donald Trump administration, which dragged China into a prolonged trade war and intensifying strategic competition with the United States, has led to fears that such a window for China might be closing.

According to the latest assessment from the top leadership and foreign policy thinkers, the strategic opportunity is still there, if potentially for a limited time, and China needs to extend it for as long as it can.

04:35

‘Welcome back America’: world leaders react to Joe Biden’s victory in US elections

The country’s strategists and advisers believe that the incoming US administration of president-elect Joe Biden, even though it is likely to still see China as a rival, will allow the two countries to pull back from the brink of a new cold war and engineer a turnaround in Sino-US relations.

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