Donald
Trump’s collision course with China
Without
realising it, US voters appear to have opened the gates to a new cold
war
Edward
Luce
YESTERDAY by: Edward
Luce
The biggest surprise
since Donald Trump’s election victory is his decision to pick a
fight with China. Not once in his campaign did he mention the word
Taiwan. Yet all of a sudden there is now a threat over America’s
“One China” policy — a bedrock in today’s unstable global
order. Beijing has so far chosen to blame a wily Taiwan for the call
between Mr Trump and his Taiwanese counterpart — the US
president-elect is “as ignorant as a child”, says China’s state
media.
On Sunday China
agreed to return an underwater drone it had seized from a US naval
vessel. Mr Trump claimed it had been stolen. China accused him of
“overhyping” the incident. Next time, Beijing is unlikely to let
him off the hook so easily.
Without realising
it, the US electorate appears to have opened the gates to a new cold
war in which America’s hand will be far less strong than it was
first time round. One of the reasons the US won the original one was
its skill at breaking China away from the Soviet block. Detente
between Richard Nixon’s US and Mao Zedong’s China in 1972
cemented the Sino-Soviet split and weakened Moscow’s global appeal.
Mr Trump plans to do the reverse.
His strong rhetoric
against China is mirrored only by his warm overtures to Vladimir
Putin’s Russia. It remains to be seen what strategic gain Mr Trump
will derive from doing deals with Russia — a country that is
stoking illiberal democracy in Europe and that played a role in
helping Mr Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. But Mr Trump’s antagonism
towards China is a gamble without an upside.
Avoiding a US-China
conflict will take Nixonian dexterity. Mr Trump is no Nixon. For all
his abuse of domestic law, Nixon was a devout student of global
affairs who grasped the geopolitical chessboard. Mr Trump is a
70-year-old neophyte with no interest in rectifying the gaps in his
knowledge. He spurns the presidential daily intelligence briefings
because they are too dull. Nor do any of Mr Trump’s advisers
resemble Henry Kissinger, who was chief architect of the One China
policy that Mr Trump is threatening to rip up. Mr Trump’s senior
appointees reflect both his anti-China and pro-Russia intentions.
Michael Flynn, the
retired lieutenant general who will play a key role as Mr Trump’s
national security adviser, believes China is in league with Isis and
other Islamist terrorist groups to defeat the US. It is a
breathtaking fiction. Before he joined the Trump campaign, Mr Flynn
believed Russia was part of the same anti-US axis. He has since
dropped his Russia hawkishness for a Trumpian admiration.
Conversely, Rex
Tillerson, Mr Trump’s nominee as secretary of state, is an old
friend of Russia — Mr Putin awarded him the Russian Order of
Friendship in 2013. At his confirmation hearings next month, the
world will learn how warmly Mr Tillerson feels towards Moscow.
Several Republican senators, including John McCain, America’s
leading Russia hawk, plan to make Mr Tillerson’s declaration that
Russia interfered in the US election a condition of their support for
him — an intelligence finding Mr Trump angrily rejects.
It is possible Mr
Tillerson’s prospects could fall at that hurdle. More likely is
that he will find a way of finessing the Russia hawks without
contradicting Mr Trump.
So what will result
from Mr Trump’s China gamble? The initial effect will be confusion.
Mr Trump’s Taiwan threat took China as much by surprise as it did
everyone else. In its guarded response, China gave Mr Trump room to
correct what it chose to interpret as a naive mistake. The next step
will be escalating tension. Mr Trump wants to be known as the
president who returns manufacturing jobs to the US, and keeps
existing ones from moving overseas. Wresting concessions from China —
such as the voluntary export restraint Japan adopted in the late
1980s — is a key part of the story he wants to tell the American
people.
Donald Trump created
a diplomatic storm earlier this month by speaking on the telephone to
Taiwan’s leader. He then suggested he might ditch US adherence to
the One China policy. Does he really mean to change US policy and if
so what will the consequences be for US-China ties? Ben Hall puts the
question to the FT’s James Kynge and Demetri Sevastopulo.
Mr Trump is using
the threat to the One China policy as leverage in that quest. If he
persists, which I believe he will, it will backfire. China will
respond by putting a further squeeze on disaffected US investors,
whose complaints about thin profits and Chinese intellectual property
theft are becoming louder by the day. Far from checking Washington’s
China-bashing, as US businesses have done in the past, many will be
cheering Mr Trump on.
Once the dispute
sets in, the risk of conflict will rise. China will find a way of
testing Mr Trump’s resolve early into his presidency — something
a little tougher than a seized naval drone. That is what happened
with George W Bush in 2001 when it forced a US spyplane to land on
China’s territory. The resulting stand-off, and eventual release of
the American crew, was quickly forgotten after the 9/11 terrorist
attacks a few months later.
Contrary to Mr
Flynn’s view, China is a natural ally in America’s struggle
against Islamist terrorism. The scope for an accident with today’s
far more assertive China — whether over Taiwan, the South China
Sea, or the East China Sea — is considerably greater than in 2001.
China’s military clout is far greater than it was then. Just last
week, new Chinese missile batteries were detected on reclaimed land
in the South China Sea.
Can we trust Mr
Trump’s instincts in a crisis? Will Mr Putin act as a restraint —
or even a mediator — between a defensive US and a rising China? We
cannot yet know the answer. What we do know is that Mr Trump’s
closest adviser is a man who sees China as a mortal foe.
edward.luce@ft.com
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