China shaping up to be central campaign theme for both Donald Trump and Joe Biden
- US presidential race already features ads with candidates accusing the other of being ‘soft on China’
- How Beijing responds to the US political rhetoric will determine whether the two sides stay engaged, analysts say
China might be the second most important campaign issue in this year’s US presidential campaign, but the country is tied so directly to issue No 1 – the devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic – that it might not matter.
As President Donald Trump and his presumptive Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, compete to portray themselves as being the toughest on Beijing, the only factor that will prevent a complete diplomatic severance, former government officials and experts said, will be the need to restore economic growth.
US media reports on Thursday that the Trump administration was pursuing conspiracy theories about the coronavirus’ origins and was formulating a raft of measures to hold China responsible for the pandemic’s damage have brought this competition into sharper focus.
This presidential campaign “will likely be the most politicised that China has been in the United States since Tiananmen Square” in 1989, said Evan Medeiros, who served as former president Barack Obama’s top policy adviser for the Asia-Pacific region. “We’re entering a very treacherous period.”
In a recent campaign ad, Trump said, “for 40 years Joe Biden has been wrong about China”, and attacked the Democrat for past comments that China’s rise was a positive development.