Thursday 11 April 2024

Does Beijing want Trump or Biden as the next US president?

I imagine China is as obsessed about who is going to be the next US president as everyone else in the world. My guess is, based on where Chinese leader Xi Zinping wants to be by 2027, Beijing would prefer to risk Trump back in the White House than have four more years of a Biden administration, following the incumbent president's vow at least twice in public to go to the aid of Taiwan if China were to invade the breakaway republic. President Xi wants the People's Liberation Army to be ready by 2027 to take Taiwan by force if necessary. That would be smack in the middle of the next US administration. Beijing doesn't know what Trump would do if he was president again but Xi and his national security advisers would study every remark Trump has made about Ukraine and might well come to the conclusion that if he is so keen to get shot of the Ukraine war issue by forcing a deal with Putin on Day One, he might possibly feel the same way about a war in the South China Sea, and not intervene. Biden, on the other hand, is today meeting with the Japanese prime minister and the president of the Philippines in the White House to discuss a tighter and broader defence pact to ensure that everyone is ready for a war in the South China Sea. So Beijing has little reason to put their money on Biden winning the election in November. Better to risk hoping for Trump and then see what gives. Xi probably thinks strategically better than most global leaders and will no doubt have taken on board the pluses and minors of having either Biden or Trump in the White House. If Bidens wins a second term it won't put Xi off sticking to his ambition for Taiwan to be returned to mainland ownership, but I doubt he will rush into it and to hell with the consequences. So a Biden second term might make him think harder about the best way to get Taiwan under his wing. But with Trump in charge, Xi might just be a little bit bolder. The world is going to change dramatically in the next decade for all sorts of reasons - climate change being just one of them - and Xi might hope that Trump would think of Taiwan as not such a big deal in the great scheme of things. Whereas Biden has already made it clear that Taiwan IS a really big deal.

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