During intense stand-offs between two big powers, most of the time it is not about who will completely demolish the other, but more about which side flinches first and comes out as the lesser power. This is exactly what has happened with the US-China trade wars and years-long stand-off. For the first time, China has issued a list of red lines and remedial action that the US must follow in order to heal relations, including the lifting of sanctions and the withdrawal of its extradition request for Huawei financial head Meng Wanzhou.
Under the leadership of Donald Trump, the USA had followed a policy of consistent pressure on China and utilising tools such as sanctions, tariffs among others to make Beijing bleed economically. These steps were so thoroughly thought out that even after the Democrats came to power, many of those actions are still active. While China believed, the US under Joe Biden would ease things for them, it has not been politically viable to be a friend of China. Now as China is reeling from economic stress and a precarious domestic situation, in its desperation it has come up with a wish list to improve relations, and it is all about undoing the Trump-era policies.
According to a Chinese foreign ministry statement, Chinese foreign vice-minister Xie Feng told US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman on Monday morning that US-China ties had reached a “stalemate” and risked “serious consequences.” As per reports, items on the remedial list include lifting visa restrictions on Communist Party members and their families, because they love to come to the United States, after all they have invested in American real estate, and let’s admit, there’s freedom in the US. Let’s not strip Chinese officials of their freedoms simply because their jobs entail stripping off freedoms in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang.
Jinping also wants visa restrictions on certain Chinese students lifted, because how else is China going to plant spies in the US system and indulge in gross intellectual property theft? China also wants Biden to lift the sanctions imposed on Chinese leaders, government officials and agencies It also seeks the removal of restrictions on Confucius Institutes (China’s propaganda centres) and Chinese companies (the same companies that help the CCP steal personal data, or those that help brutalise minorities in a modern scientific way) Jinping also wants the US to cancel rulings determining Chinese media as foreign agents (because Trump designated Global Times as agents of the Communist state because that’s what it is), and the other demand is that the US drops its request to extradite Meng Wanzhou from Canada. Meng is the daughter of the CEO of Huawei, who is also a close CCP aide of Jinping. She is accused of violating sanctions on Iran as the Huawei CFO.
The policies of Donald Trump concerning China were a natural course of foreign policy manoeuvring that the USA had to undertake. That is why even though the Biden administration has tried its level best to reverse all the policies of its predecessor, it has decided not to reverse Trump’s China policy. Earlier in his term, it was reported that the White House expects to keep tariffs on China left by the Trump administration in place, though it will evaluate what is appropriate going forward, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Read more: Biden wanted to drop tariffs on China, but Donald Trump has created a rule so tight, that he cannot
In 2020 alone, the Trump administration took at least 210 public actions related to China that spanned at least 10 departments, according to publicly available data, demonstrating what the administration calls a “whole-of-government” strategy. The Trump administration also levied sanctions on 90 Chinese entities or individuals, comprising 11.5% of total U.S. sanctions designations last year, according to data compiled by the Center for a New American Security.
These policies are still mostly in place and the Biden administration is politically bound to further build on them. This has come like a nightmare for China which understands it very well that it will not be able to sustain under this consistent pressure and out of desperation it has come out with a wish list for the Biden administration.
In the US-China standoff, it is China that has flinched first and has come up with a list of actions that the Biden administration will not be able to deliver on. While the Biden administration may be tempted to accept it, the people of the US have become very informed about the intentions and actions of the Chinese Communist Party, and however eager Mr Joe Biden might be for following through the list, the political climate in America will not allow him to do so.