Despite openly challenging the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party's rule in China and presenting unprecedented troubles to the Chinese economy and Chinese companies through steep tariffs and an export ban, US President Donald Trump's legacy on bilateral relations is unlikely to be long-lasting, political analysts told Sputnik
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th January, 2021) Despite openly challenging the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party's rule in China and presenting unprecedented troubles to the Chinese economy and Chinese companies through steep tariffs and an export ban, US President Donald Trump's legacy on bilateral relations is unlikely to be long-lasting, political analysts told Sputnik.
Trump is expected to leave Washington on Wednesday morning without attending President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, making him the first president in over 150 years to skip the ceremonial transfer of power to his successor.
Winning the hearts of millions of US voters with his "Make America Great Again" slogan in 2016, Trump tried to fulfill his presidential campaign promises by targeting China, which he labeled the primary villain that had stolen US trade secrets, robbed millions of jobs from American workers and caused billions of dollars in US trade deficits through unfair trade practices.
Following a brief honeymoon period, when he claimed to have "great chemistry" with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a state visit to Beijing in November 2017, Trump launched a series of initiatives and policies that would sink bilateral relations to the lowest point since former US President Richard Nixon's ice-breaking visit in 1972.
In March 2018, Trump started the trade war against China by slapping steep tariffs on more than $50 billion worth of Chinese goods. The bilateral trade tensions escalated quickly, with both countries introducing reciprocal tariffs on each other.
In May 2019, Trump ordered the US Department of Commerce to add Huawei to the "Entity List," which effectively banned US companies from doing business with the Chinese tech giant without prior US government approval. The US export ban almost killed Huawei's smartphone business, as the company relied on US technology, especially microprocessors that power the devices it produces.
During their recent public speeches, senior officials in the Trump administration, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, openly called out the Chinese Communist Party when talking about China-related threats and tried to undermine the party's legitimacy in Beijing by separating the party from ordinary Chinese people.
"We must also engage and empower the Chinese people - dynamic, freedom-loving people who are completely distinct from the Chinese Communist Party," Pompeo said during a speech in July of last year.
Trump's open hostility against China and the ruling Chinese Communist Party was unprecedented and most disruptive to bilateral relations, Chinese political analysts pointed out.
"The Trump administration directly challenged the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party's rule in China. The US government did not do this even during the Cold War. This was something new and disruptive in the bilateral relations. If you talk about Trump's legacy on bilateral relations, this was more important than the trade war or the decoupling between the two countries," Xu Guoqi, a history professor specializing in US-China relations at Hong Kong University, told Sputnik.
At the same time, the Trump administration continued to step up relations with Taiwan, despite consistent protests from Beijing. In early January, Pompeo announced the US government's decision to lift restrictions on interactions between US officials and their Taiwanese counterparts, which Beijing views as a serious violation of Washington's commitment to the "One China" policy.
Professor Xu added that Trump's Taiwan policy was also something no former US president did after 1969.
"After China and the United States reconciled following Nixon's inauguration in 1969, the Taiwan issue has never been challenged like this. Both sides always abided to the consensus that Taiwan was part of China, although they probably had a different definition of what China stood for," he said.
Nevertheless, the expert believed it would be unlikely for the Biden administration to continue this kind of open hostility against Beijing, despite the overall trend of deterioration in bilateral relations.
"After Joe Biden takes office, the trend of the increasing gap between the two countries is likely to continue because Trump made it the new reality. We may never return to the 'good old days.' But I don't think Biden will repeat Trump's hostile rhetoric, which appears to be calling for regime change in China," he said.
During the 2020 US presidential election, Trump tried to attack Biden by accusing him of being soft on China.
As a result, Biden may try to reverse Trump's open hostility against China without publicly announcing the changes, Professor Xu suggested.
"I don't think Biden will publicly declare that he would move away from Trump's signature hostile policies against China. I think he could just do the deeds without talking about it in public. For example, he could just order the US state department officials to avoid making official contacts with Taiwan, without making a public statement about it. I'm sure he won't try to poke Beijing in the eye like Trump did," he said.
Before both sides reached a temporary truce in the trade war by signing an agreement in January last year, China's economy faced a lot of pressure because of escalating tensions with the United States. China's annual economic growth fell to the slowest pace since 1990 � to 6.1 percent in 2019.
However, the global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 changed everything and Beijing's success in containing the spread of the deadly new virus helped to lift the enormous pressure China faced from tensions with the United States, a Chinese political analyst suggested.
"Under the special circumstance of the global pandemic, all the countries in the West, including the United States, have been struggling to resolve the domestic crisis. The economic punishment [from steep US tariffs and export ban] failed to have an impact, as the world was badly in need of Chinese products such as personal protective equipment. China's trade surplus expanded unprecedentedly," Li Datong, a Beijing-based political analyst who served as an editor at the Communist Party newspaper, China Youth Daily, told Sputnik.
China's exports jumped by 18.1 percent year-on-year in last December and 21.1 percent year-on-year in last November, respectively, official data from the Chinese Customs showed.
The expert argued that China faced tremendous pressure from Trump's policies before the global pandemic hit in early 2020.
"Without the pandemic, Trump's policies were actually very effective. China faced an enormous amount of pressure. But the pandemic kind of saved China from it," he said.
According to official data from China's National Bureau of Statistics, the Chinese economy grew by 2.3 percent year-on-year in 2020, making it the only major economy in the world to achieve economic growth last year.
In comparison, the International Monetary Fund expects the global economy to contract by 4.4 percent year-on-year in 2020, with economies in hard-hit countries like the United States and India falling by as much as 4.3 percent and 10.3 percent, respectively.
Nevertheless, Li pointed out that Trump's export ban on key US technology, such as microprocessors, exposed China's vulnerability in the high-tech sector.
"It looks like the United States has many ways to choke China. A simple export ban on microprocessors was able to paralyze us," he said.
Both Xu and Li believed China would try to take the opportunity of Biden's term in office to repair damages caused by Trump.
Xu noted that Chinese President Xi sent a letter to former Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz in early January, urging him to play a positive role in improving bilateral relations.
