Biden’s Legacy on China

Ahead of the U.S. presidential election on November 5, surveys of Asian opinion showed a preference for continuing President Joe Biden’s attentive collaboration with allies and partners and bias against former President Donald Trump. This mismatch in Asian preferences and U.S. voting results will add to difficulties for the incoming Trump administration in regional competition with China.

Biden’s Legacy

During the 2024 presidential election campaign, Biden repeatedly highlighted his administration’s achievements in “checking” Beijing’s challenges and ambitions, which come at the expense of the United States and many others. The U.S. government built “positions of strength” at home and abroad, which provided “integrated deterrence.” Biden coordinated tools of national power with allies and partners to credibly deter aggression and increasingly create circumstances shaping Beijing’s actions without the U.S. resorting to military force.

Major achievements at home involved the passage of massive spending bills valued $2 trillion aimed at strengthening U.S. infrastructure, high technology capacity, and climate change procurements – all moves that also targeted China. In the Indo-Pacific, the Biden administration worked successfully to advance bilateral alliances via increased interoperability, exercises, and institutional innovations (e.g. creating a new command structure in Japan), establishing new minilateral frameworks among allies (such as the Japan-South Korea-U.S., AUKUS, and Japan-Philippines-U.S. trilaterals), institutionalizing groupings such as the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S.), and buttressing bilateral partnerships with India and other partners including Vietnam and Indonesia – the latter two with new comprehensive strategic partnerships.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 did not divert U.S. attention away from China and Asia. Rather, the Biden administration succeeded in increasingly integrating NATO, the G-7, and individual Western allies – notably the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, France, and Germany – with U.S. partners in the Indo-Pacific. These partnerships formed various united fronts to counter China’s military intimidation and expansionism, economic malpractice, and high technology ambitions, as well as Beijing’s political repression at home and support for Russian aggression abroad. Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea now actively participate in NATO deliberations.

The lively debate in Washington over the pros and cons of the U.S. hardening against China – prompted by the August 2022 visit to Taiwan by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – ended after a few weeks with both the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress doubling down on efforts to support Taiwan, with the increasing backing of regional and Western allies.

In response, Beijing saw the wisdom in selective moderation in its assertive posture. Xi Jinping compromised with the Biden administration, dropping past onerous preconditions for agreeing to the U.S. government’s longstanding calls for talks with China to set guardrails to manage rising tensions and avoid war. A modest charm offensive sought to reduce tensions and stabilize relations with the United States and many U.S. partners and allies, though not Taiwan, the Philippines, and arguably India.

In addition to being motivated by seeming U.S. success in “checking” China, serious Chinese domestic problems preoccupied Beijing. These included a markedly slowing economy, serious malfeasance and corruption in the Chinese military, and unprecedented mass demonstrations against China’s “zero COVID” policies in late 2022.

In sum, the Biden-Harris administration, with broad support from bipartisan majorities in Congress, reinforced systematic and steady advances in countering China, forecasting continued hardening ahead. There were some perceived shortcomings. Republicans in Congress sometimes criticized the Biden administration’s dialogues with China, but the anticipated acrimonious China debate did not materialize in the 2024 election campaign. Broad bipartisan agreement on hardening U.S. policy toward China remained. The escalating conflict in the Middle East clearly preoccupied Biden and his aides but strong initiatives involving $2 billion arms sales to Taiwan, major new tariffs targeting China and restrictions on U.S. investment in China went forward.

Asia’s Skepticism Toward  Trump

While regional governments usually avoid taking sides in U.S. elections, private and sometimes public perspectives of Asian elites reported by The Diplomat, the East West Center, and other outlets were frank in focusing on the negative implications of Trump’s reelection.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, was seen as likely to continue the Trump administration's tariffs, add substantial new tariffs, and employ ever stricter investment and export restrictions. Nevertheless, Harris was also expected to continue Biden’s incremental policies, which were often introduced after close consultations with impacted regional governments. This approach was preferred in most Asian countries to a Trump administration’s predicted abrupt, unilateral, and disruptive policies.

Based on negative experiences with the previous Trump presidency, regional elites in several major countries reacted with considerable anxiety to Trump’s reelection. The countries most concerned are the same ones that have aligned with and depend on the United States in facing major perceived threats from rising China.

Heading the list are Taiwan and the Philippines – U.S. allies and partners deeply involved with and dependent on Biden administration countermeasures against China’s challenges and very vulnerable to Chinese punishment. They are followed by South Korea and to lesser degree Japan. All of these countries worry about Trump’s opposition to the Biden strategy of relying on such allies and partners. Trump demands that these countries reduce trade surpluses with the United States, compensate Washington for its military support, increase their military spending, and accept limited consultation as U.S. decision-making employs unpredictable, abrupt, and often disruptive actions.

Although Taiwan’s government remained publicly optimistic, government and non-government observers privately viewed a reelected President Trump with trepidation. He is the only prominent politician in the United States who repeatedly denigrates Taiwan’s importance and contributions to its own defense and praises China’s Xi Jinping. Trump is widely seen as inclined to seek an agreement with China at the expense of Taiwan.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has defied Beijing’s bullying in the South China Sea for over two years and has sought and received strong military, diplomatic, and economic support from the Biden administration. Against this background, Philippine specialists were concerned that U.S. support could wane under a second Trump administration. The possibility of Trump pursing an agreement with Xi that would jeopardize Philippine security was raised repeatedly.

Korean public opinion remains negative toward Trump. Some experts believe that South Korea dealt reasonably well with Trump administration demands and could do so again, but others forecast major problems over defense cost sharing, trade deficits, and little consultations with Seoul on U.S. decisions impacting South Korea.

Tokyo is seen as generally optimistic that it can manage demands from Trump without major costs for Japan, just as it did during the first Trump administration. Such confidence is offset by a possible initiative from Trump to negotiate agreements with Beijing that would jeopardize Taiwan’s security (a top priority Japanese concern) or a renewed Trump effort to negotiate a peace agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Perhaps of more importance, observers in Japan, as well as Singapore, Australia, Taiwan, the Philippines, and South Korea worried that Trump’s election showed stronger U.S. preoccupation with domestic social and government dysfunction, international economic disengagement, and crises in Europe and the Middle East – all weakening U.S. commitment to leadership in Asia.

Australia is less worried about Trump returning to power. Reasons include Canberra’s overall success in managing relations with the first Trump administration, Australia’s trade deficit – not surplus – with the United States, and its robust military expenditures and active force deployments amply sharing the defense burden with Washington. That said, some Australian analysts worry that AUKUS, the newly formed partnership between Australia, the U.K., and the U.S., may face new headwinds under Trump.

Most Southeast Asian nations rely on hedging in relations with the United States and China. They avoid taking sides and thereby reduce differences with either great power. Nonetheless, Trump’s anticipated steep rise in tariffs and record of abrupt decisions negatively impacting regional stability influence regional opinion to rely more on China.

For its part, the Chinese government favored neither candidate, while Chinese commentators in limited public discourse and in private remarks criticized both presidential candidates. Beijing was said to be well prepared for either. It offered no compromise on serious Chinese challenges to the United States.

Xi’s recent emphasis on stabilizing the relationship with the United States – a strong theme of his final meeting with Biden – was echoed by Chinese interlocutors who privately expressed a preference for Harris and continuity over the major disruptions expected with Trump. That said, Chinese commentators welcome the weakening of U.S. leadership in Asia amid domestic preoccupations and economic protectionism as opening the way for China’s ascendance.

Going forward, it is far from certain how the incoming Trump government will calculate its interests, or the costs and benefits of preferred policies in Asia and the Indo-Pacific. It is clear that neglecting or disrupting the positive features of the Biden legacy and ignoring or worsening the gap between Asian governments and Trump have serious costs that work to the benefit of rising China.