HONG KONG — One is a former president who promises to double down on the trade war he started with China but who could stoke global instability to Beijing’s advantage. The other is a vice president who may be more conciliatory in the short term but could mobilize American allies against China’s growing global influence.
Which U.S. presidential candidate would Chinese President Xi Jinping rather work with?
Whoever wins the White House next month — former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris — will set the tone and much of the substance of the relationship between the world’s two largest economies.
Xi has not expressed a preference for the outcome of the Nov. 5 election, with his State Department calling it an internal U.S. affair.
Behind the scenes, Chinese officials may have a slight preference for Harris, if only to preserve the recent progress the Biden administration has made in improving U.S.-China ties, said Jia Qingguo, the former dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University. “We have four years of experience with Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is a very unique character. He is not a normal politician. He is not even a normal businessman,” said Jia, who is also a political adviser to the Chinese government. “He is very unpredictable and he can be very emotional. He can take measures that would cause great problems between China and the U.S.,” Jia added.
With both Democrats and Republicans viewing China primarily from a national security perspective, Jia and others say Chinese officials expect difficult times for relations regardless of who wins the White House.
Chinese officials appear to accept that both Harris and Trump are likely to take a “fairly tough” and “skeptical” approach to China, said Brian Wong, a fellow at the University of Hong Kong’s Centre on Contemporary China and the World. He also said Beijing may favor Harris somewhat, as she would likely see her as “more manageable” in the policies introduced by President Joe Biden, even if they are not necessarily China-friendly.
“I think China prefers the heightened sense of predictability and also codifiability when it comes to Harris,” he said. “But again, it’s a weak preference.”
Trump, on the other hand, is “much more likely to be erratic” and also “incredibly transactional,” Wong said.
“In theory,” he added, the former president “could be more flexible and malleable on issues related to Taiwan.”
Beijing sees self-governing Taiwan as its own territory and has not ruled out using force to achieve unification. Although the US has no official relations with Taiwan, the country is the island democracy’s main arms supplier and its main international supporter.
While Taiwan has generally been pleased with Trump’s handling of the island while he was in office, he has recently called on Taiwan to pay Washington more for its defense and accused the island of undermining the U.S. semiconductor industry. When asked whether he would use U.S. military force to defend Taiwan from Chinese aggression, Trump told the Wall Street Journal editorial board last week that he “wouldn’t have to” because Xi “respects me and he knows I’m f—— crazy.” He said he would respond by imposing tariffs of 150% to 200% on China, and perhaps even cutting off trade with one of the United States’ largest trading partners altogether.
In line with U.S. policy, Harris has also declined to say whether she would use military force to defend Taiwan. Instead, she has emphasized the importance of military communication with China and supporting Taiwan’s ability to defend itself.
Tariff talk
While Trump has talked far more about China than Harris has during the campaign, neither has said much about how they would manage ties with Beijing.
That may be partly because a hard line on China is one of the few issues on which Trump and Harris, and their parties, agree. But China also doesn’t rank high on voters’ lists of national security priorities, compared with immigration and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
In last month’s presidential debate, China was discussed primarily in the context of tariffs.
Biden has maintained and in some cases expanded the tariffs on Chinese imports that Trump introduced as president, citing national security concerns. If she wins, Harris is expected to continue Biden’s targeted tariffs and restrictions on key Chinese technology sectors.
Meanwhile, Trump has doubled down on the idea of taxes on imports, proposing across-the-board tariffs of as much as 20% on goods from all countries and 60% or higher on goods from China. According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank, Trump’s proposals would cost the average American household more than $2,600 a year.
Trump’s tougher trade policies toward China, combined with his antipathy toward U.S. alliances in the Asia-Pacific region, point to greater instability in U.S.-China relations, said Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.
“Under a Trump presidency, Sino-American relations will face intense friction, severe crises, and even military conflict,” he wrote in a recent essay for the Asia Society Policy Institute.
“US-China ties will continue to be tested during a Harris presidency, but they could be more stable than they were during the Trump and Biden years,” Wu said. Harris has never been to China, but she has made multiple trips to Asia as vice president, including to the Philippines, where she reiterated Washington’s commitment to defending its ally against Chinese aggression in the South China Sea.
Her only direct meeting with Xi came during one of those trips in 2022, when they briefly exchanged remarks at an Asia-Pacific summit in Bangkok.
As a senator, Harris co-sponsored the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, which condemned Beijing’s alleged human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region, and the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which supports democracy on Chinese soil. (Trump signed both.)
“The vice president is aware of the threats posed by China, and as president, she will ensure that the United States wins the competition for the 21st century,” a campaign spokesman said.
It remains unclear who would advise on China policy in a Harris administration, while Trump would likely turn to some of the same people who influenced China policy in his first term, including Robert O’Brien, who served as his national security adviser, and Mike Pompeo, the former CIA director and secretary of state.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
On China’s heavily censored social media, Trump supporters dominate.
Some are less concerned about Trump’s China policy but admire his authoritarian tendencies and “anti-woke” rhetoric, according to Kaiser Kuo, the host and co-founder of the Sinica Podcast.
Others believe Trump is likely to undermine U.S. alliances, irritate multiple countries with tariffs and generally “lower America’s standing in the world, which is good for China,” he said.
A common translation of Trump’s name in Chinese is Chuan Jianguo, or “Trump builds the nation” — the nation being China.
But it’s a mistake for both countries to view U.S.-China relations as a zero-sum game, Jia said. “What’s bad for the U.S. is not necessarily good for China,” he added.
Walz’s China record
Of the four people on the Republican and Democratic slates, the one with the most experience in China is Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who spent a year teaching English in China after graduating from college and later founded a company with his wife that has taken groups of high school students to China every summer for years.
Walz wanted to go to China “to see for himself what this country is all about before he makes a judgment,” said Christy Day, a student from Walz’s China days who now lives in Perth, Australia.
Walz, who has long been an outspoken critic of China’s human rights record, said the goal of his trip was to help young Americans learn more about China and young Chinese learn more about democracy.
“I understand China a lot better than Donald Trump does,” he told reporters in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, this month, noting the praise Trump has heaped on his “very good friend” Xi.
In his recent memoir, Trump’s former national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, described telling John Kelly, the president’s then-chief of staff, that Trump had fallen into Xi’s “trap” when he discussed Taiwan and U.S. military exercises with South Korea, while ignoring the talking points McMaster had laid out for him ahead of their 2017 meeting in Beijing. (A Trump campaign spokesman said McMaster’s memoir is “full of false stories.”)
“Xi Jinping is not someone you should look up to,” Walz said. “Xi Jinping is not someone you should say he’s doing a good job, as Donald Trump has said about Covid.”
Walz’s Republican rival, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, has largely discussed China in terms of economic competition, supporting Trump’s plans for tough tariffs on Chinese imports and stressing that the U.S. must compete with its rival. Walz, whose experience in China is not mentioned in his biography on Harris’ campaign website, has come under fire from Republicans who see that experience not as an advantage but as grounds for suspicion. Last month, the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Department of Homeland Security for information related to Walz’s “long-standing connection” to China’s ruling Communist Party.
“People wonder if he’s been kept away from anything to do with China because of this perception on the right that he’s ‘tainted’ with, you know, empathy, because he’s spent so much time there?” Kuo said.
Kuo added that he found Walz “to have a lot of human connection, which I think is really needed right now.”
Jennifer Jett and Peter Guo reported from Hong Kong, and Janis Mackey Frayer reported from Beijing.