Who does China want to win the US election?
16 October 2024
Ahead of the US presidential election on 5 November, we'll be publishing a series of opinion pieces from leading regional experts analysing what’s at stake for Asia in the upcoming election. In this article, China expert Jeremy Goldkorn looks at what a win for either candidate might mean for China and considers how China's leadership may be assessing the election. Jeremy Goldkorn is an editor and writer who has extensive experience covering China issues. He co-founded the Sinica Podcast in 2010, was editor-in-chief of The China Project from 2016 to 2023, and is currently an editorial fellow at ChinaFile, a website of the Asia Society.
Pundits have many different answers to the question “Who does China want to win the U.S. election?” But there are only a handful of people in the whole world who have any idea of what is in the head of Xi Jinping right now, and that’s really the only thing that matters when it comes to understanding what “China” wants.
It seems fair to guess that Xi and other senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials perceive Donald Trump as a president who would weaken US alliances and its standing in the world, and who may be bribable, but is definitely also dangerously unpredictable.
On the one hand, Trump has promised to put tariffs on all imports and still occasionally grumbles about China. Trump also continues to present himself as a hard man who can intimidate the leaders of other countries (despite his thin skin), which means anything could happen, depending on his mood and the American political atmosphere.
President Donald J. Trump meets with Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, at their bilateral meeting at the G20 Japan Summit in Osaka in 2019. Photo: Wikimedia
On the other hand, Trump completely reversed his position on banning TikTok a week after a meeting attended by Jeff Yass, a billionaire investor and donor to Republicans whose firm owns a major stake in TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance.
Elon Musk, who has a huge business in China, has Trump eating out of his hand. And as Kamala Harris put it: “Tyrants and dictators…are rooting for Trump. Because…they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors.” And judging from some of his remarks about Taiwan and his attitude on Ukraine, it is hard to see Trump coming to Taiwan’s defence if the P.R.C. decides to attack.
What’s on the other side? A Kamala Harris administration would likely continue with the Biden presidency’s more consistent China policies. These include export controls on high-tech products such as microchips, sanctions related to human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other groups, and public rhetoric that is critical of Beijing, but also actions to stabilise the bilateral relationship, such as military to military meetings which have resumed under Biden after several rounds of intense diplomacy.
If the Chinese government is ambivalent on the candidates, so too are ordinary people. On Chinese social media, Trump is sometimes called “Build the Country Trump” (川建国) because he is perceived to have contributed to American decline and the rise of China. But he also has many fans amongst anti-Communist Party members of the Chinese diaspora who like him because they think he was tough on China as president and would continue to be so if re-elected.
Kamala Harris is not well known to the Chinese public, so views of her candidacy seem loosely held, although some internet users see a Harris-Walz ticket as better for China relations with the U.S. because Tim Walz has years of experience and travel in China.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz at a 2024 presidential campaign rally in Arizona. Photo: Wikimedia
Whatever Xi Jinping and the citizens of China are thinking, Xi’s advisors on US policy must all be aware that the only point of bipartisan consensus in the US right now is the need to “get tough on China.” Nobody in Beijing—and nobody observing US-China relations—expects US-China relations to get significantly better any time soon.
Here’s a way to read the mood in the US when it comes to China:
I live in Nashville, a city that usually votes for the Democratic Party, but is in a state, Tennessee, that has been reliably Republican for the last two decades. A guy running for some local government position recently sent campaign advertising by mail to my address. His top campaign promise in bold and large type size was: “I’ll combat China!” (Like, with what, an AR-15?)
What this signifies to me is that here in the US, we are going to make some very bad decisions about China in the coming years, whoever is president.
Both Republicans and Democrats suffer from a blindness to the resilience of the Chinese Communist Party and of China’s economy.
Both Republicans and Democrats suffer from a blindness to the resilience of the Chinese Communist Party and of China’s economy.
- Jeremy Goldkorn
There is an almost religious belief in the US that a country cannot truly succeed unless it is a free market democracy. That belief is going to be tested in the coming years and decades.
*This opinion piece was first published on Asia New Zealand Foundation's website Asia in Focus
-Asia Media Centre
