In a recent commentary, Zongyuan Zoe Liu of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations recalled what might be termed the “good old days” of China-U.S. relations – just over a decade ago in time, but seemingly far removed in sentiment. As Liu wrote:
Not long ago, American and Chinese people mostly liked each other. In 2011, polls showed that the majority in each country viewed the other favorably. That same year, the “Kung Fu Panda” series was a hit at the box office for the second time, offering a rare cultural touchpoint both nations shared. Economically, the United States and China seemed inseparable. The term “Chimerica” captured this dynamic: China produced and saved; the United States consumed and borrowed. The relationship was celebrated as the engine of global growth, helping the world recover from the 2007–08 global financial crisis.
Yet in the years since, the anti-China narrative has become lodged in the U.S. psyche. Today, the amiable era of “Chimerica” has been long forgotten, thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to launch a relentless campaign targeting China with tariff and tech restrictions. The last eight years of Washington-Beijing hostilities have turned the U.S. public consensus against China, and in dramatic fashion. As Liu noted, a 2024 Pew survey showed that 81 percent of Americans viewed China unfavorably, with 42 percent perceiving it as an “enemy” of the United States. Today China is more likely to be depicted as hostile and unfriendly in U.S. popular culture – as seen in the political tv drama thriller series “The Diplomat” (2023) – than be celebrated for its pandas and kung fu.
Just before the U.S. presidential election in November 2020, there was much discussion in China over whether a victory by the Republicans’ Donald Trump or the Democrats’ Kamala Harris would be less disadvantageous for China’s economic and national interests. In spite of the setbacks tariff and tech wars brought to China’s economic and technological growth, it was believed by some that the Trump 1.0 presidency had provided useful opportunities for China’s top leader Xi Jinping and the country’s military establishment. And the shift from Trump to President Joe Biden in 2021 didn’t exactly change the needle on Trump’s China policy.
When the “Cold War warrior” – a moniker the Chinese coined for Biden – entered the White House, Beijing hoped the Democratic president would steer the fraught China-U.S. relations toward improvement and at least avoid plunging the bilateral ties into a new Cold War. As Nanjing University scholar Zhu Feng put it in mid-2020: “Beijing should avoid any illusions that a Biden presidency will automatically change everything, but Beijing should be ready and recognize what sort of efforts China could step up and do.”
However, U.S. concern about China’s threat to its national security deepened further under Biden, and his administration went a step further in choking China’s tech industries with restrictions on investments and export controls. In China’s views, the Biden administration also exploited the “Taiwan card” – a “red line” issue in the U.S. relationship with Beijing.
As the U.S. presidential election 2024 neared in early November, the consensus in Beijing was that China-U.S. tensions would remain, regardless of who won. On October 31, days before the voting, when asked to comment on likely expectations of the Chinese Communist Party leadership regarding a Trump or Harris win, Shi Yinhong, an international politics professor at the Renmin University in Beijing said, “Whether Harris or Trump becomes the next U.S. president, the continuity in U.S. policy toward China will almost certainly outweigh any major shifts.”
That’s precisely why, despite the Chinese official media and social media playing full coverage of the 2024 U.S. election campaign, among the Chinese public interest in the two candidates and their policies appeared muted compared with 2016 and 2020 elections. “It doesn’t matter who wins,” one social media user wrote in a popular comment on China’s X-like platform Weibo. “Their containment of China won’t ease.”
Interestingly, despite Trump’s first four years in office having delivered huge economic and technological setbacks to China, he was popularly called Chuan Jianguo (川建国, meaning “nation-builder Trump”) in Chinese slang. A certain fondness for Trump on Chinese social media does not mean the leadership in Beijing preferred another Trump presidency, but it’s undeniable that Biden’s term in office did little to open space for negotiation between Washington and Beijing.
Still, Trump’s return to the White House was not expected to signal a meaningful shift in the already fraught and fragile bilateral relationship. Given the bipartisan consensus favoring an aggressive stance in the United States’ China policy – a rare constant over the past eight years – Beijing was well-prepared for the second Trump administration to stay the course, albeit with a more transactional and less predictable approach.
However, contrary to Beijing’s expectations, China seemed to have been let off in the early days of the Trump 2.0 presidency. Yes, Trump has implemented two rounds of tariffs on China – sparking reciprocal moves from Beijing – but U.S. allies and partners have received the same harsh treatment. There’s little to suggest a particular antipathy toward China in Trump’s tariff policy. It’s also been widely noted in China that Trump gave TikTok a reprieve from a Biden-era law that would have banned the popular app unless its Chinese parent company fully divested.
Thus a recent editorial in the pro-Beijing Chinese tabloid Global Times observed that after more than a month in office, China-U.S. relations under the new administration have had “a relatively mild and cautious start.”
Some U.S. sources have added strength to this argument. First, around the time when Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, Xi Jinping’s leading man responsible for China-U.S. economic ties, held his first phone conversation with Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on February 19, the New York Times ran an article proclaiming: “Trump Eyes a Bigger, Better Trade Deal with China.”
Second, many in China have followed with deep interest the news that Trump is seeking budget cuts to the U.S. Defense Department. One influential current affairs commentator pointed to the potential military spending cuts as proof that Trump “does not want to go to war with China.”
Despite the conflicting signals, the Chinese intelligentsia overwhelmingly still believes that the U.S. political elite is determined to strive for its twin objectives: stifling China’s economic growth and forcing regime change. But given Trump’s seeming disdain for traditional pillars of U.S. foreign policy, a massive shift on China policy is not impossible.
Trump has been in office for over six weeks, and the establishment in Beijing seems clueless regarding the new U.S. administration’s thinking on China. They are far from alone.