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How will the Biden administration’s China policy be remembered?

U.S. President Joe Biden meets with China's President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in Lima, Peru, November 16, 2024.
U.S. President Joe Biden meets with China's President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC Summit in Lima, Peru, November 16, 2024. (REUTERS/Leah Millis/Pool)

When President Joe Biden entered office on January 20, 2021, America’s economy was cratering. The country was navigating its worst public health emergency in 100 years. Shards of debris were still being swept from areas where protesters had violently attacked the country’s democratic foundations just two weeks earlier in a coordinated attack on the peaceful transfer of power. Abroad, support for America’s leadership had plummeted. America’s relations with allies and partners were under strain after years of unilateralism.

China, meanwhile, appeared to be on the ascent. Economists were exploring when—not if—China’s economy would surpass America’s in terms of gross domestic product. China appeared to be gaining ground militarily through a broad build-out of a wide array of advanced capabilities. Many U.S. military and intelligence officials were forming a conclusion that China could invade Taiwan by 2027.  This was the strategic environment within which the Biden administration charted its initial policy moves toward China.

Biden’s starting points on China

From the outset, Biden and his advisors determined that several policy adjustments would be needed following the Trump administration to respond to a more assertive and capable China. The first was to return alliances and partnerships to the center of American foreign policy. The Biden administration studiously engaged with allies and partners in Asia and Europe before reaching out to Chinese officials. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s first contact with his Chinese counterpart was not until February 5, 2021, nearly three weeks into the presidential term and well after he had prioritized speaking with America’s partners. Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also did not meet face-to-face with their Chinese counterparts until Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had first traveled to Seoul and Tokyo to consult directly with their alliance partners. I will return to Blinken and Sullivan’s initial meeting with counterparts from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) shortly.

Additionally, the Biden administration put an early emphasis in its China policy on democracy and human rights. From the outset, Biden administration officials stressed their concerns about developments in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet, and the state of human rights in China broadly.  Biden and his staff helped push the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act into law during his first year in office. This act deemed that any products from Xinjiang would be presumed to be made with forced labor and thus barred from entry into the United States unless the importer could provide convincing evidence to overcome this presumption. The Biden administration also imposed sanctions and travel restrictions on Chinese officials involved in human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Additionally, Biden and members of his administration launched a Summit for Democracy in their first year. Biden declared the world was in a competition between democracy and autocracy.

The Biden team also sought to present itself as representing a return to professionalism and steadiness after the tumultuous years of the Trump presidency. They cultivated a narrative of having experience, and in Biden’s case, personal knowledge about how Chinese President Xi Jinping thinks and operates, based on his past time spent with Xi as President Barack Obama’s vice president.

The Biden administration also devoted considerable attention during its first and second years to securing congressional funding for the second major plank of its China strategy: turbocharging domestic American industry. Through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, the United States allocated close to $2 trillion to support national investments in clean energy, semiconductor manufacturing and research and development, and modernization of America’s infrastructure. This signal of national purpose attracted record levels of foreign direct investment and also led to considerable crowding in of private capital in these sectors.

Such a united front of American and allied coordination on technological controls had never been developed against China on such a scale.

Over time, the Biden team also significantly expanded export controls of sensitive and dual-use technologies to China. The administration homed in on specific chokepoints in semiconductor value chains where the United States and its partners are producers of specialized technologies and equipment and conducted painstaking diplomacy to bring allies together in implementing coordinated export controls. Such a united front of American and allied coordination on technological controls had never been developed against China on such a scale. Even critics of this approach would acknowledge that these and related efforts slowed China’s technological progress, the degree to which remains under debate.

Biden’s strategy delivers results

Biden’s three-pronged China strategy of strengthening alliances and building new partnerships; investing in industrial policy at home; and limiting technology exports to China achieved notable gains. At the most fundamental level, America was stronger and healthier, and its economy was measurably more dynamic at the end of Biden’s term than when he began. The gap in relative size between America’s economy and China’s economy widened in America’s direction over Biden’s term. This also was reflected in investment flows. Inbound investment into America jumped considerably, even as it declined 80% in China between 2022-2023, reaching 30-year lows. A similar story applies to stock market performance. The S&P 500 rose around 54% during Biden’s term, while China’s stock markets underperformed and declined.

At the end of Biden’s term, America was closely aligned with allies and partners in Europe and Asia, including in new configurations such as the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) alliance; the strengthening of the Quad group of countries involving Australia, India, Japan, and the United States; and the establishment of two separate trilateral alliance coordination mechanisms: one with Japan, the United States, and the Republic of Korea; and one among the United States, Japan, and the Philippines.

China’s relations with virtually every developed democracy around the world are more turbulent than they were four years ago.

Meanwhile, China no longer appears to be on an unstoppable ascent. China’s military brass is still mired in a seemingly endless cycle of revelations of corruption and purges, even as the People’s Liberation Army continues to field a wide array of advanced capabilities. China’s relations with virtually every developed democracy around the world are more turbulent than they were four years ago. Whereas China was on the verge of signing an investment agreement with the European Union on the eve of Biden’s inauguration, now China faces sanctions and tariffs in Europe. In Asia, China’s relations with Australia, Japan, South Korea, India, and Taiwan were simultaneously strained at the time of Biden’s exit. Even among developing countries that China has courted as a hedge against rising antagonism with developed democracies, China is beginning to run up against protectionist trade barriers in places like Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, Chile, and Mexico.

In fairness, China also enjoys notable bright spots. The country has secured support for expanding the BRICS grouping to include new and prospective members, including Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. China’s investments in many developing countries have grown in recent years, encouraging greater complementarity between China and these countries. Chinese firms dominate a growing array of sectors, from clean energy to batteries, electric vehicles, drones, and shipbuilding. Chinese artificial intelligence startup companies, such as DeepSeek, have sent shockwaves through global markets as they have begun pushing the frontiers of innovation.

On balance, though, China no longer enjoys the shadow of the future it once did as the unstoppable force for reordering the world in the 21st century. Many Chinese experts and officials recognize this shift in China’s fortunes but are struggling to reverse it, particularly as power becomes concentrated around the country’s top leaders. This concentration of power is leading to rigid and reactive policymaking that is eroding confidence inside the country about its own future.

U.S.-China relations restore functionality

When Biden entered office, the U.S.-China relationship was dysfunctional. On the eve of Biden’s inauguration, channels of communication were reduced to a procedural dialogue on the implementation of a “Phase 1” trade agreement that was hardly worth the paper it was printed on. There was a perfunctory military channel to address irritants about operational behavior. Relations had grown so fraught that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff felt it necessary to reach out to his Chinese counterpart near the end of the Trump administration to disabuse rumors that the United States might launch a war with China. Such an unusual move was taken, in part, because no other channels functioned for clarifying intentions and setting expectations about the conduct of the relationship. Mutual recrimination over the origin of COVID-19 filled the vacuum.

From that low starting point, the Biden administration over its four years rebuilt capacity to make headway on specific problems with China, even as it worked to shore up American competitiveness. The Biden administration secured Chinese law enforcement coordination in reducing the flow of fentanyl precursors and returning Chinese citizens who had entered the United States illegally. American diplomats negotiated the release of wrongfully detained American citizens. U.S. and Chinese military leaders restored connectivity between both country’s forces, including by establishing a new theater-level channel between the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the People’s Liberation Army Southern Theater Command. Both militaries also resumed pre-notification of intercontinental ballistic missile launches and restarted efforts to address incidents through the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement. These efforts lowered the risk of military conflict. Importantly, Biden and Xi also agreed to maintain human control over all nuclear launch decisions and not to cede such decisionmaking to artificial intelligence, making them the first world leaders to reach such an understanding.

The Biden team achieved this progress without pulling its punches on competitive actions it deemed necessary to push back against Chinese transgressions. The Biden team carried forward President Donald Trump’s China tariffs and added to them. The administration expanded the scope of export controls and introduced an outbound investment screening mechanism for American investments into sensitive sectors of China’s economy. It increased the use of human rights tools to sanction and restrict travel by Chinese officials. It tightened coordination with allies and partners on China, including on condemning China’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, Beijing’s growing pressure on Taiwan, and China’s escalatory actions in the South China Sea. The Biden team also set new precedents in terms of American support for Taiwan, such as by making excess defense articles available to Taiwan, expanding the foreign military financing program to Taiwan, and Biden becoming the first president to vow publicly to defend Taiwan if it comes under PRC attack.

Biden administration blunders

Many of the Biden administration’s missteps on China policy can be traced back to a tendency to allow politics to drive policy. This tendency repeated itself throughout the Biden administration. For example, as the nominee for secretary of state, Blinken made news by declaring that China was engaging in genocide in Xinjiang. Blinken was already secure in his confirmation and did not need to create news in his hearing to become secretary of state. He easily could have indicated he would prioritize reviewing the available evidence to reach a judgment on whether China was committing genocide after he assumed office. This would have bought him time and space to use the ongoing review as leverage to push China to make specific observable changes in its behavior, and if it did not, render a judgment that genocide was being committed. Instead, Blinken publicly declared before he had even been sworn in that China’s authorities were genocidal. Such a move served as an early instance of political calculations taking precedence over sound diplomacy.

The Biden team misjudged that its early finger-wagging condemnation of China would earn the administration applause from the American electorate. For example, the Biden administration’s first encounter with senior Chinese officials was a case study in diplomatic malpractice. Blinken and Sullivan decided to host their Chinese counterparts, Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi, for an ice-breaking meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. Rather than use this first contact to signal priorities, push back on areas of concern, and begin to build a forward-looking agenda for the relationship, Blinken and Sullivan crafted their perfunctory welcome greetings in front of the press as a condemnatory laundry list of Chinese misdeeds. This prompted Yang, China’s top diplomat, to erupt in defense of China’s national dignity, leading to an extended ping-pong volley of blamesmanship between U.S. and Chinese diplomats in front of the global media. Instead of demonstrating a return of competence and professionalism to the relationship, Blinken and Sullivan instead advertised their unpreparedness. They delivered a public spectacle that tainted the Biden team’s claim to be mature stewards of great power competition.

Blinken never recovered from these early missteps and thus undermined his own capacity to conduct diplomacy with Chinese counterparts. Beijing viewed him throughout his tenure as a grandstanding point scorer that Chinese officials were obligated to tolerate, but never oblige. Sullivan did recover, eventually establishing a productive private channel with his Chinese counterpart to manage the most sensitive issues in the relationship.

In August 2022, then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi traveled to Taiwan. Before traveling, she indicated that she was determined to visit Taiwan, but that she would reconsider if Biden intervened directly with her. Biden never did so, but instead sent his staff to advise Pelosi on the harm her visit would generate for American interests. Pelosi proceeded to visit Taiwan. Beijing responded aggressively, including by erasing a de facto centerline in the Taiwan Strait that both sides of the Strait had observed for decades and by launching missiles over Taiwan.

Several months later, in an effort to pull the relationship out of the spiral it was stuck in, Blinken planned a carefully orchestrated visit to Beijing in January 2023. Just as Blinken was preparing to depart for Beijing, news emerged that a Chinese spy balloon was drifting across the United States. Instead of using the incident as an opportunity to travel to Beijing, backfoot Chinese officials for violating American airspace, and laying out concrete steps those officials would need to take to dig themselves out of their self-made hole, Blinken caved to congressional Republican pressure for him to postpone his trip as a sign of displeasure. Blinken’s decision to briefly postpone his visit in deference to congressional pressure reinforced for Chinese senior officials that Blinken’s approach to China would blow with the political winds.

Biden also fell into this trap of privileging politics above policy. Despite criticizing Trump’s tariffs against China during the 2020 campaign for harming American families, Biden caved to political pressure after entering office. He not only sustained Trump’s tariffs but added to them throughout his tenure. Biden and his advisors concluded that there were not any appreciable gains available for adjusting the tariffs that would offset the political risk of being accused of going soft on China by removing them. Predictably, during the 2024 election, Trump used Biden’s timidity on tariff adjustments to argue Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were weak followers and poor imitators of his own approach to China. Trump upped the ante during the campaign by challenging Harris to explain why the Biden administration had not increased tariffs on Chinese imports to 60% as he had begun advocating for.

At a more fundamental level, the Biden administration appeared unable or unwilling to articulate any sense of purpose or direction to its strategy on China.

At a more fundamental level, the Biden administration appeared unable or unwilling to articulate any sense of purpose or direction to its strategy on China. Officially, members of the administration would point to Blinken’s policy speech whereby he explained that America would “invest, align, and compete” with China. Additionally, Sullivan and others often invoked the need for “managed competition” with China. They argued for intense diplomacy to leaven intense competition. In this vein, former Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell argued that America should focus on a steady state in its relationship with China rather than an end state. Such types of framing failed to identify specific benchmarks or goals that would amount to “wins” or even “progress” in America’s competition with China. Managing competition is a process, not an outcome or destination. Imploring Americans to pursue a steady state of managed competition proved too abstract to stimulate public emotion, commitment, or support.

Where Biden’s China policy came up short

The American people are not enthusiastic about confrontation with China. Even though Biden and his advisors repeatedly and publicly conveyed that they sought to manage competition and avoid war, their rhetoric was belied by daily news about intensifying U.S.-China confrontation, spy balloons being shot down over U.S. territory, naval flare-ups in the South China Sea, and the prospect of war over Taiwan as soon as 2027.

According to polling from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Americans’ foremost priority for U.S.-China relations is to avoid a military conflict. Sixty-nine percent of respondents viewed this goal as very important, even as they simultaneously recorded record levels of unfavourability toward China. Seventy-seven percent of Americans now hold an unfavorable view of China, far higher than at any point in recent decades, including in the aftermath of the Tiananmen massacre on June 4, 1989.

Put differently, while the American public strongly disapproves of Chinese conduct, their foremost interest is in ensuring their leaders manage relations with China in ways that will steer clear of conflict. Americans do not view the threat from China as an opportunity to rally around an external foe. Most Americans want their leaders to handle relations with China firmly and responsibly so that they do not need to add the prospect of war between nuclear-armed rivals to their list of daily concerns.

Trump found a straightforward narrative on China that appealed to the American body politic in ways that eluded the far more eloquent rhetoric of Biden and his team.

Trump seemed intuitively to understand this American sentiment on the 2024 campaign trail. When one attempts to boil down the rambling bluster that characterizes Trump’s rhetoric, his core message on China has been that he knows how to get things done with Xi, he will be strong in dealing with China, and he will be a leader who ends wars and does not start them. In other words, Trump found a straightforward narrative on China that appealed to the American body politic in ways that eluded the far more eloquent rhetoric of Biden and his team.

Without a narrative arc to explain the intended direction of strategy on China, a vacuum emerges that is often filled with information about the risks China poses to the United States. Over the past four years, for example, there has been ongoing discussion about the myriad ways in which China is the source of the problems that the American people confront, such as fentanyl, COVID-19, and the hollowing-out of America’s manufacturing sector. When China is presented as the antagonist and America as the victim, many Americans naturally feel vulnerable rather than secure. Reminders about national vulnerability sap public confidence in the strength of America’s leaders, rather than inspiring it. Biden failed to meet the moment in reassuring the American people that he had firm control over the China challenge. His primary shortcoming was not in specific policy design but in storytelling.

Biden’s narrative on China paled in comparison to the sweeping rhetoric Franklin D. Roosevelt employed to rouse a shaken nation during World War II. It lacked the uplift that Ronald Reagan used to stir optimism in American competitiveness during the Cold War. It fell short of the reassurance George W. Bush provided after the attacks of September 11, 2001, to temper public fears.

Biden and his advisors never attempted to emulate, for example, John F. Kennedy’s effort in his 1963 commencement speech at American University, “A Strategy for Peace.” In that speech, less than one year after the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy laid bare the deep division between the United States and the Soviet Union and the profound risks of failing to responsibly manage the competition between both powers. But he also humanized the Cold War confrontation, reminding the American people, “We all cherish our children’s future,” and we all have a stake in averting war. Then Kennedy laid out steps he intended to take to drive progress on his strategy for peace.

All these past leaders provided a vision, a sense of direction, and a national purpose during America’s previous periods of global competition. They explained what the stakes were, what America sought to achieve, and how it would go about doing so. Biden failed to match his predecessors’ performances on this score.

Lessons from Biden’s China policy for the future

Ultimately, history renders judgments on the impact of policies by their longevity and their results. George Kennan’s theory of containment of the Soviet Union offers a classic example of a strategy that had longevity and generated results. Similarly, Jean Monnet’s vision for the future of post-World War II Europe helped stamp out the embers of war and foster the emergence of the European Union.

For all its worthy elements and the positive progress that it generated, Biden’s China strategy will not have staying power.

For all its worthy elements and the positive progress that it generated, Biden’s China strategy will not have staying power. Elements of Biden’s approach may endure, such as efforts around export controls and tariffs. Two of the core pillars of Biden’s China strategy—alliances and investments at home—are unlikely to find favor in the new Trump administration. This is not because Biden’s strategy lacks merit, but rather because it does not align with Trump’s conviction that economic growth is spurred by tax cuts and deregulation, and war is best averted through direct diplomacy with China’s leaders. As a result, Biden’s strategy will mostly be remembered as the interregnum between Trump’s two terms. This is not an indictment on the talented members of the Biden administration who built and executed the strategy, but rather a recognition of the reality that American politics has rendered.

Regardless of what Trump does over the next four years, the U.S.-China relationship will remain a central feature of America’s foreign policy debates in 2028 and beyond. As the 2028 presidential cycle warms up, presidential candidates and their advisors would do well to study what worked, and importantly, what did not, from the Biden administration’s approach to China. On its merits, the strategy was sound; it put America in a stronger competitive position vis-à-vis China. Biden’s principal shortcoming was in convincing the American people that he had the U.S.-China relationship firmly under control. American leaders cannot succeed on charged foreign policy issues without explaining themselves convincingly and securing support from an anxious polity. This requires persistent presidential communication and storytelling. Such efforts will disappoint, though, if their primary purpose is to eke out incremental progress in congressional debates over specific pieces of legislation. To become remembered as historically impactful statesmen/women, leaders must rise above point-scoring and tactical political positioning. They must rally national support for their vision of harnessing American power to deliver a world that better protects the safety, health, and prosperity of the American people.

America does not enjoy the luxury of deciding how the U.S.-China relationship is conducted. China’s leaders also get a vote. China’s leaders contributed mightily, arguably disproportionately, to the rivalry’s intensification in recent years. They will offer few favors to any presidential candidate who articulates a vision for the relationship that falls short of accommodating China’s ambitions. Even so, America’s leaders define the narrative inside the United States for what strategy is needed to make lives better for future generations. Past American leaders have drawn from a deep well of optimism and grit to build support behind strategies for America to outcompete its adversaries and prevail over its enemies. Future leaders will need to summon a similar spirit if they wish to advance a strategy on China that endures and has impact.

Author

  • Acknowledgements and disclosures

    This piece is dedicated to Jeffrey Bader, who passed away on October 22, 2023. The author would like to thank Adam Lammon for editorial support, Rachel Slattery for layout, and Kevin Dong for research assistance.

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