Minxin Pei
The Indian Express
November 6, 2012
The tight presidential race in the United States has raised anxieties around the world about the future of American foreign policy. Nowhere is the level of uncertainty and fear higher than in Beijing.
The question of who wins on November 6 is a particulary high-stakes matter for China, because Washington’s China policy has become a focal point in the presidential race. Republican challenger Mitt Romney has seized on China’s undervalued currency and infringement of intellectual property rights and vowed to impose sanctions on Beijing as soon as he walks into the White House. In his own defence, President Barack Obama has touted his record of levying extra tariffs on Chinese goods and suing China in the World Trade Organisation.
In Beijing, senior officials are watching this anti-China slugfest in the US with a mixture of resentment and worry. As the proverbial punching bag for American politicians, the Chinese government is getting sick and tired of being accused of various wrongdoings by Washington, especially since some of the accusations are not true. For example, the value of the Chinese currency has, in fact, risen more than 10 per cent in real terms, and the Chinese yuan is close to the market rate in the minds of investors. At the same time, Chinese leaders obviously fear that some of the tough rhetoric on China may have real consequences, leading to a serious deterioration in Sino-American relations.
Like leaders in most other countries, the Chinese would prefer to see Obama re-elected. This is not because they love him. They simply fear and loathe the idea of a Romney administration, which they expect will be arrogant, self-righteous, and confrontational.
To be sure, Beijing has also been severely disappointed by Obama. When Obama started his presidency in early 2009, he wanted to elevate US-China ties and make China a partner in tackling global challenges. To win Chinese goodwill, he downplayed human rights issues and went out of his way to show Beijing his recognition of its geopolitical importance. However, he switched to a tougher policy after he and his advisers concluded that this softer approach was not working. His new China policy has more teeth. On the trade front, he is not afraid to use America’s anti-dumping weapon against surging Chinese imports. More importantly, on the geopolitical front, he has adopted a realpolitik-based security strategy, dubbed the “pivot to Asia”, which is seen to be squarely directed at China’s growing clout in the region. Adding insult to injury, the Obama administration has thrown its support behind many of China’s neighbours like Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan, which have ugly ongoing maritime territorial disputes with China.
So for the Chinese, another four years of Obama may not be good news. However, compared to Obama, a Romney administration seems a nightmare.
Based on past experience, a new administration in Washington inevitably means a period of bilateral tensions. The only exception was the Obama administration. There are two explanations. First, a new administration appoints officials who lack the necessary experience in handling a bilateral relationship as complex as the one between the US and China. In particular, few new presidents are versed in the intricacies of America’s China policy. The learning curve is steep. Second, if China is featured prominently as a campaign issue, the incoming president who attacks his opponent for being soft on China usually has to carry out some of his threats to maintain minimum credibility. For example, in 1993, Bill Clinton threatened to end China’s trading privileges if it did not improve human rights (although he quickly abandoned the policy). George W. Bush authorised the largest sale of American hi-tech weapons to Taiwan in 2001 to show that he was serious about treating China as a “strategic competitor”.
If seen in this light, Romney’s get-tough-on-China talk may be just campaign rhetoric. But there is a good chance that some of it could actually become policy. To be sure, labelling China a currency manipulator may trigger a drawn-out process of trade retaliations that, in the end, amounts to little. However, the prospects of a costly trade war between the US and China could spook the markets. Romney could make life miserable for China on other trade issues. It is conceivable that he will invoke more anti-dumping measures to impose heavy import duties on Chinese goods.
Romney’s national security policy will also be much more hardline than Obama’s. Some of his key foreign policy advisers are well-known neo-conservatives who worked in the Bush administration, such as John Bolton. They will likely advocate a more confrontational approach to Beijing. Romney may endorse giving even greater support to Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines in their maritime disputes with China. What looks like a covert containment strategy to the Chinese today could quickly become an overt one.
For Beijing, such a conclusion would not be far-fetched. If they read the polls carefully, they will find that Republicans are far more hostile to China than the Democrats. The most recent Pew Research Centre poll on American attitudes toward China shows that two-thirds of the Republicans see China as a threat and support a tough China policy, while only a minority of the Democrats share this view.
So for Beijing, the choice between Obama and Romney is not merely a matter of the-devil-we-know versus the-devil-we-don’t. They may not know Romney well, but what they do know about him makes them very worried.
But the sky is not falling on Beijing. Should Obama win, the status quo, a form of restrained strategic competition, will continue. China and the US will periodically engage in fights over trade, human rights, and regional security issues. But their overall relationship will not deteriorate to the point of open hostility. If Romney wins, the bilateral relationship is likely to deteriorate rapidly at the initial stage of his presidency, but will eventually reach a floor when Washington and Beijing realise that a US-China cold war is in nobody’s interest. Two factors could work in China’s favour. Romney’s hardline Bush-like foreign policy will almost certainly get him into trouble in other hot spots around the world, particularly Iran and Syria. He will be too distracted to focus on China. Most importantly, Romney will be preoccupied with America’s domestic difficulties. The “fiscal cliff,” which mandates across-the-board spending cuts, is looming. His plans for tax and spending cuts will run into fierce opposition. He will find, most likely, that his worst enemies are not the communists in Beijing, but the Democrats in Washington.
The writer is a professor of government and non-resident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the US.
