THREAD:

Which Trump era policies should Biden keep on countering Chinese hostile behavior?

I spoke to good friends who served in the Trump administration as career professionals on China policy. Here is what they think:

- what Trump admin really did on China is to impose costs for its hostile actions and China did not really escalate = its possible to raise the costs for China and it will back down once it feels a hard response (in sense of though sanctions and trade restrictions)

- Trump administration cost imposition strategy had two potential outcomes: either it persuades Beijing to rein in bad behavior.

- Or if not, we highlight for the world China’s bad behavior and take steps to protect ourselves and diversify away from dangerous dependence.

- The Trump administration policy logic is: If imposing costs on China for its hostile activities doesnt “work” and China does not stop it, we need to adjust to the reality that Beijing wants to decouple itself from the free world.

- The fear among career U.S. China policy professionals is that Biden admin will go into „negotiating“ mode with PRC, which PRC will use as a policy trap = „you want our cooperation on climate, Biden team main international agenda? Then do not punish us hard“.

- The same reflexive control trap Russia used with Obama administration, saying „do not be hard on us if you want our cooperation on counter-terrorism“.

- EU doesn’t really understand that its in a power position on PRC as it is negotiating the EU-China trade deal.

- EU could use this power position to force China to really change its behavior (by freezing the negotiations), but so far it isn’t really happening.