The current state of US-China relations does not engender confidence that the two big powers can adequately navigate crises, said analysts on The Straits Times’ Asian Insider video and podcast.
There have already been incidents when the United States called the Chinese side, but they “did not pick up, so there is no real dedicated hotline where you can really confirm that both sides are going to pick up… the way there was in the latter period of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union”, said Mr Joshua Kurlantzick.
“So I would have no confidence in that whatsoever,” added the author and senior fellow for South-east Asia at US think-tank Council on Foreign Relations.
“The Biden administration may be searching for some base maybe in the relationship, and maybe (Chinese President Xi Jinping) was (signalling)… to back off (on) some of the wolf warrior diplomacy. Maybe.”
But Mr Kurlantzick said if one takes a broader view, President Joe Biden’s China policy is “very tough”, much tougher than former president Donald Trump’s.
While Mr Trump’s China policy saw him stating “a lot of tough things, some of them actually overtly racist... (it was) all over the place and not coherent”, he added.
Mr Kurlantzick noted that Mr Biden’s approach, while not making overtly racist statements, has been “consistent, consistently tough and coherent in a way that Trump’s hasn’t”.
“And that’s only likely going to increase in the run-up to (the US presidential election in November) 2024.”
In fact, there is little daylight between Republicans and Democrats on the issue of China, he said. “I don’t have very high expectations that the relationship is going to improve.”
Dr Adrian Ang, research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, speaking alongside Mr Kurlantzick, said the chair of the new House China Committee’s proposed visit to Taiwan later this spring would strain relations with Beijing.
Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin is chair of the Select Committee.
Nikkei Asia reported on Feb 13 that US Representative Rob Wittman, a member of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the US and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), had told the Japanese journal that he and other committee members were in talks on a possible trip to Taiwan.
Earlier, China warned against a visit to Taiwan by newly installed Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy after reports surfaced that he was planning a trip.
“We urge certain individuals in the US to earnestly abide by the one-China principle,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said on Feb 13, adding that Beijing is “opposed to any official interactions with Taiwan”.
Dr Ang told Asian Insider: “I think for countries in South-east Asia, one of the difficulties that we’ve seen… (is that) the countries in the region do not have agency in the state of domestic politics in the US and China.”
And in the US, “what is happening, of course, is a competitive dynamic between the two parties”, he added.
“It’s a liability to be soft on China.”
The video and podcast will be aired at midnight on Feb 21.
