heavyweight champion, incoming Democrats want to see a fitter, smarter America pick
fights with China more carefully, then train hard to win each one.
A wary China will try to ease tensions but has no illusions about a full reset of relations.
There will be no return to the days before 2016, when American presidents of both
parties argued that engagement might lead China to open its economy—and perhaps its
society—to the world. Instead, Mr Biden will level a different criticism at Mr Trump:
that in swinging too wildly at the assertive China of the Xi era, he failed to land decisive
blows.
Disappointment awaits business bosses who hope to see Mr Biden rush to cancel,
wholesale, the tariffs that Mr Trump imposed on two-thirds of imports from China. Nor
will Mr Biden instantly unwind all the export controls and investment curbs that the
Trump administration slapped on Chinese technology firms. Mr Biden must deal with
Chinese leaders sure that America is bent on keeping China down, making a great-
power contest inevitable. To maintain leverage he has an interest in dismantling Mr
Trump’s trade barriers only cautiously.
Mr Biden will at times sound positively Trumpian when he talks about the need for
reciprocity in dealings with China, and about bringing manufacturing jobs back to
America, with industrial policies and “Buy America” rules to support domestic firms if
necessary. Though he often supported free-trade agreements during four decades in the
Senate, he leads a Democratic Party more sceptical than ever of globalisation. As vice-
president, Mr Biden was a cheerleader for free-trade alliances designed to counter
China’s mercantilist ways, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. As president, Mr Biden
will not rush into any such pacts.
China will find some changes reassuring. The Biden White House will be staffed by
mainstream economists who believe that trade tariffs are mostly self-defeating, and
who see grave risks in using the dollar-denominated financial system as a tool to hold
China down—a gambit that appealed to some senior Trump aides. The door of the
Biden Oval Office will be more open to tech bosses from Silicon Valley. They will plead
with the government to be much more selective about declaring that certain high-tech
products and supply chains are a threat to national security, and must not involve China.
Still, some things about a tech-savvy Biden administration will make life harder for
China. The president will call for America to retain primacy over China in foundational
technologies of the future, from artificial intelligence to quantum computing, with the
help of massive investments in basic science. He will be less alarmed by apps such as
TikTok, a Chinese-created digital platform on which teenagers film their dance moves.
He will be more likely than Mr Trump to welcome Chinese students to American
universities, saying that he trusts the fbi to spot the small number sent to steal secrets.
A more open America is a mixed blessing for Chinese officials trying to get talented
researchers to come home.
In private, Chinese officials openly admit that they liked Mr Trump’s lack of interest in
human rights or liberal democratic values. They know that will change. Notably, Biden
advisers have said that their boss sees a worrying divide opening between techno-
democracies, which use digital tools to expand freedoms, and a techno-authoritarian