In an article (August 26) captioned 'Inside Biden’s China Policy' published by US-China Focus, Yang Wenjing of CICIR analysed the 92-page Democratic Party platform and said the Democrats seem to have already inherited this premise of the 'China threat'. She observed that the platform informs that the Democrats will not pursue a new cold war with China, which according to her implies, that if they take office they will end the current fierce confrontation with China. The Democratic Party will nevertheless continue to regard China as the top competitor. She assessed that in the economic field, Biden will continue the decoupling trend with China and also “take aggressive action against China that tries to undercut American manufacturing by manipulating currency, dumping products like steel and aluminum in our markets, providing unfair subsidies, stealing intellectual property, and conducting cyberespionage.” The future Biden administration will continue to reshore manufacturing and vital supply chains back to the country, and also heavily punish perceived Chinese misbehavior, though possibly by different methods. She noted that Biden has emphasized once again that he would repair and reinvent alliances and partnerships, put diplomacy as the first priority instead of the military and rejoin international institutions to restore American leadership. While these might be better for China than the current situation, China should not overlook the fact that repair of U.S. alliances and a restoration of prestige together with more consistent coordination by the U.S. with its allies will increase the hedging against China. The Democratic Party platform, she noted, also promises to make “smart investments to keep the military’s competitive edge,” ensuring that the U.S. military has no peer in the world and can deter and win the conflicts of the 21st century, which she pointed out is no different from Trump’s position. But she said Biden might replace Trump’s slogan of Indo-Pacific with Asia-Pacific once again. She said in conclusion that Biden will “fully enforce” the Hong Kong and Uyghur acts and push back on China’s “malign behaviour,” but will also pursue cooperation on issues such as climate change and nonproliferation while attempting to ensure that the U.S.-China rivalry be kept under control. She ended with the observation that "for Biden, the stability of the bilateral relationship still counts".
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