It is early days to assess future US/China relations and the messages coming out of Washington are conflicting.
On the one hand, Biden has moved away from some aspects of Trump’s hard-line on China and announced, first, a pause in legal proceedings to consider whether to continue with Trump ban on China’s video app TikTok and second, a review of Trump’s ban on messaging in the US by WeChat. The administration has given itself 60 days to carry out the review.
At the same time, clear evidence of a continuation of Trump’s hardline came with the words of Jake Sullivan, the new US Security Adviser, who said that Biden was prepared “to impose costs for what China is doing in Xinjiang, what it is doing in Hong Kong and threats that it is projecting towards Taiwan.”
China has sent Biden its own message when its military aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defence zone, + carried out simulated missile attacks on USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier in S China Sea.
China prefers co-operation to confrontation but knows how to look after itself if Biden sticks to Trump’s policy.
