US congressional hostility toward China limits Joe Biden's ability to forge better ties, experts say

While US President Joe Biden seeks "strategic competition" with China and "common-sense guard rails" to avoid veering into conflict, former diplomats and other China observers say that the bipartisan hostility China faces in Congress is preventing cooperation between the two nations.

The difficult US political environment has left Biden little room to forge more amicable relations with China, while the Chinese Communist Party's concerns over political and economic instability also contribute to the strains, Susan Thornton, a former senior State Department official, said on Tuesday.

"Nobody wants a crisis right now," Thornton, now a senior fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Centre, said at the South China Morning Post's annual China Conference: United States.

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"But there are certain dynamics internally in both countries that, unfortunately, probably find a bit of tension and instability in the relationship useful."

The Biden administration has been rebuilding relationships with partners and allies in the Indo-Pacific, some of which were severed under his predecessor Donald Trump.

It has reached out to other democratic countries to shape global norms in a bid to surpass economically, diplomatically and militarily what it perceives to be a more assertive China.

The administration has also boosted trade and military ties with Taiwan, causing the Chinese government to warn repeatedly that the US observe the one-China policy, the bedrock of US-China ties for decades that has been interpreted differently by Beijing, Taipei and Washington.

Most of Biden's China agenda is geared to ensure that the US is ready for a consensus-based and unified future, but he must grapple with hardline political opposition, Thornton said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping does not face the same problem, she added, but the Communist Party feels threatened and is very concerned about instability in the country.

Kurt Tong, a former US consul general to Hong Kong and Macau and now a partner at the Asia Group, said that the bipartisan opposition to China in Congress reflected strong feelings across American society.

"The large bulk of the American public and Congress [that] is seeking confrontation and competition with China is unhappy with the emergence of an authoritarian Chinese regime [that] is having a lot of influence on the global stage," he said.

On a separate panel, Anna Ashton, vice-president for government affairs at the US-China Business Council, noted that China is one of the few areas on which Democrats and Republicans could work together and said that some lawmakers have invoked China to get work done on issues from infrastructure investment to Covid-19 response to climate strategy.

More than 550 China-related bills and resolutions had been introduced between 2019 and 2021, she said, and more than 330 have already been proposed this year - at least double the number of such actions going back to the early 1980s.

"So you kind of can't overemphasise how worked up both parties are on the [Capitol] Hill about China," Ashton said.

"And that does, sort of, diminish prospects for cooperation, even if the Biden administration wants to pursue some sort of more meaningful cooperation than we have right now."

By becoming a foil for the US, she said, China is now a spur for both domestic and foreign agendas. She added that it would emerge as an issue in the US midterm elections in 2022.

"Republicans and Democrats are keen to position themselves as the better choice for answering the China challenge," she said. "As the months wear on, and we get closer to November of 2022, we're going to see less and less agreement between the two parties."

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2021 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2021. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.