China-US Relations Under Trump: More Continuity Than Change

Pragmatism has prevailed but suspense remains. There is, in reality, more continuity than change in how China and the United States relate to each other. Such is the aggregate state of relations between the two countries seven months into the Donald Trump presidency. Work plans announced at the meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping in early April 2017 marked an end to months of suspense. In China, there was a sense of relief that US policy has not followed through—not in letter, that is—on the onerous options Mr. Trump articulated before January 19, 2017, which cover the entire spectrum of political, economic, and military ties. At the same time, hard work remains ahead to prevent the coin from flipping to the other side to conflict escalation.

For China, the rise of Trump to the US presidency has introduced a new level of unpredictability into its bilateral relationship with the United States, which is traditionally complex. Chinese foreign policy elites adopted the Western “black swan” analogy to indicate their level of unpreparedness for the arrival of a new style of head of state in the White House. But then, since the legacy of bilateral ties at the end of the Obama administration was hardly cordial and, with the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton having a track record of hawkishness toward China on East Asian regional security and Chinese domestic political issues (Dyer and Mitchell 2016), expectations for an improvement in ties had not been high, either.

In this commentary, I am going to try to situate my observations of the US-China relationship during the past half year in the context of some of the structural geopolitical issues that are certainly going to remain throughout and after the Trump administration. These issues—over which the two sides have differences each finds difficult to walk back from—have worked to shape Chinese policies toward the United States and vice versa. The remaining question is how to manage them in order to avoid the kind of shocks that may risk a downward slide in the relationship to a point of no return.

Viewed from China, how the United States acts over Taiwan continues to be the issue that alone can define the overall level of political relationship Beijing can have with Washington, bilaterally and multilaterally. Given Taiwan’s governing Democratic Progressive Party’s refusal to pay even lip service to a One China orientation, an increase in Washington’s contacts with Taipei does not bode well for Beijing at all. North Korea for decades has succeeded in defying calls, including those from China, to denuclearize, and it is too early to say if Trump’s talk of an end to “strategic patience” can make a real difference. China should continue to work with the United States on North Korea, if only to reduce the chance for the latter to drive the wedge between the two even further. The maritime space in East Asia attracted US attention in recent years in part due to the popularity of the simplistic notion of an inevitable clash between the United States in decline and China on the rise. That notion needs to be debunked.

Taiwan

On December 2, 2016, Trump spoke by phone with Tsai Ing-wen, leader of Taiwan. This was unprecedented for a US president-elect since the United States switched its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. Coming on the heels of China-bashing as a key component of his campaign, few believed Trump simply found it impolite to take yet another congratulatory call from abroad on his election victory; Trump later made clear this was not the case and that the call was planned (Gearan, Rucker, and Denyer 2016).

By the time of the Trump-Tsai conversation, official contacts between Beijing and Taipei had been effectively put on hold, due to Tsai’s refusal to explicitly acknowledge the “one China, respective interpretations” version of the One China principle both sides have operated under since 1992. Under Tsai’s predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou, structural ties between Taiwan and the mainland did...