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The United States’ midterm elections are unlikely to deliver a “disruptive” shock to relations between Beijing and Washington despite potential volatility over the issue of Taiwan, according to a prominent mainland Chinese expert in US studies.
Chen Dongxiao, president of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said any shift in the make-up of the US Congress would mainly complicate President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda.
The impact on foreign policy would be “relatively limited” as the US leader would retain considerable discretion in that area, Chen said in an interview published ahead of a historic night for the Democratic Party.
“The midterms may reshape the political landscape in Congress, but they won’t necessarily deliver a massive, disruptive blow to China-US relations,” Chen told The Paper, a digital news outlet owned by the state-run Shanghai United Media Group.
The Democrats are on track to take control in the House of Representatives and the Senate in the November 3 elections, leaving Trump a lame duck for the rest of his second term.
Even if Democrats take both chambers, their core objective will probably be to curb Trump’s executive power over the next two years rather than to focus on overturning his China policy, according to Chen.
“The two parties share considerable common ground on China strategy, leaving little impetus for a wholesale reversal of the existing framework,” he was quoted as saying.
“It is worth noting that on specific issues such as arms sales to Taiwan, Congress has long been dissatisfied with Trump’s earlier delays,” he warned. “After the election, lawmakers from both parties may exert greater practical pressure to push forward arms sales to Taiwan.”
Still, Trump tended not to be swayed entirely by bipartisan opposition when dealing with political rivals and could push ahead with policies based on his own judgment, Chen added.
“As long as his energy is not fully consumed by domestic political investigations and Congress does not make China policy its primary target, he can still play a positive role in keeping relations with China stable.”
Chen called on Beijing to maintain “strategic composure” while seeing that a “hard constraint” on Washington was the “objective reality” that neither side could win a nuclear war or bear the cost of a complete economic decoupling.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the United States, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.
“The bilateral relationship is currently in a state of ‘tactical truce’ and has yet to achieve a substantive detente,” said Chen, who is also vice-chairman of the China National Association of International Relations.
While neither side wanted to add further risks to an already strained relationship, the US had also “not substantially eased pressure” on China over issues such as economic and technological restrictions, he added.
Before the midterms and just weeks ahead of an expected third face-to-face encounter this year between the US leader and his Chinese counterpart, the Trump administration imposed sanctions and bans on more Chinese companies, on various grounds.
Trump and President Xi Jinping are due to meet in Shenzhen on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit later this month.
Still, Chen noted that a growing bipartisan consensus had formed in the US that pressure and containment alone would not work but that Washington needed to sit down with Beijing to manage the competition through rules and “guardrails”.
Following the first two bilateral summits this year – in Beijing in May and Washington in September – China and the US agreed to build “a constructive relationship of strategic stability on the basis of respect, fairness and reciprocity”.
The coming changes to the political terrain in Washington out of the midterms have raised questions about whether that vision could survive Trump’s final two years in office.
Chen advised Beijing to continue explaining its view of the concept to the US and take “proactive” steps to press Washington to uphold the consensus – turning it into an institutional framework that could outlast American political cycles.
While managing bilateral competition away from a zero-sum dynamic, the two powers should devote equal or even greater effort to identifying new areas of shared interest to play as an “anchor” for keeping bilateral ties stable, he said. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
