The arrival of President Trump in the White House has triggered an intense debate within China’s influential think-tanks, with most concurring that that the change of guard in the United States poses serious challenges to China, but also opens out new opportunities, including likely support for the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative.
At a more fundamental level, some analysts of are of the view that that if Mr. Trump pursues the mantra of American “exceptionalism” — an assumption of Washington’s inherent superiority over other nations — that would obstruct the betterment of Sino-U.S. ties.
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“The Americans claim they are exceptional, like a city on a hill. But the world has changed and new countries have emerged. But U.S. identity has not changed. So the rise of China challenges U.S. identity,” Wang Yiwei, professor at Renmin University told
Listing a variety of responses to Mr. Trump’s arrival among the Chinese think-tanks, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post quotes Ting Gong, a researcher at the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS) — a think-tank under the Foreign Ministry — as saying that Mr. Trump was likely to be more supportive of China’s OBOR initiative than former President Barack Obama. She highlighted that former Trump adviser James Woolsey had criticised Mr. Obama’s opposition to the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), suggesting that the new U.S. President was likely to hold a different view from his predecessor.
The OBOR is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s mega-connectivity project envisaging revival of the ancient Silk Road, with transport and industrial infrastructure in Eurasia. A complementary maritime dimension called the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road is also planned under OBOR.
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‘Proclivity for protectionism’
Yuan Zheng, a director of the U.S. Diplomacy Research Centre at the China Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), asserted that Mr. Trump showed a clear tendency towards protectionism. “The new U.S. President was likely to adopt a hardline approach in trade, demand for Beijing to play by international rules and threaten it with sanctions,” South China Morning Post said quoting his paraphrased remarks.
The Chinese establishment, including the academia, has opposed Washington’s possible turn towards protectionism. Liu Zongyi of of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies explained to The Hindu that, “China has benefited a lot from globalisation and regional economic cooperation in the past decades.” He added: “China believes that only by opening up, globalisation and regional economic cooperation can economic growth and social development can be secured.”
‘Be confrontational’
Many Chinese scholars and former officials have advocated adoption of more assertive response to the Trump presidency’s supposedly combative style. Yu Yongzheng, a prominent member of the CASS, proposed that “Beijing should not yield in the face of Trump’s hardline approaches and adopting a more confrontational diplomatic style might be more effective in influencing Trump’s judgement.”
South China Morning Post described CASS as a leading think-tank in philosophy and social sciences, which came directly under the provision of the State Council, headed by Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang.
In countering the possible headwinds from Washington, Fu Ying, a former deputy foreign minister, proposed that Beijing should prepare its own tool kit and adopt corresponding measures through legal and economic means to deal with the post-Trump situation.
‘Political threat’
In assessing the “threats” to China from the U.S., Wang Jisi of the Centre for International and Strategic Studies at Peking University, stressed that rather than military or economic, the threat is “political” from Washington, which has sought to undermine the legitimacy of the Communist Party of China (CPC). “To us, the biggest threat posed by the U.S. is a political one, instead of economic or military competition. We see the U.S. as always intending to overthrow the Communist Party’s rule over China … and wanting to manipulate our domestic politics,” he observed.
The South China Morning Post highlighted the importance of Wang Huning, who heads the Central Policy Research Office, as a key player in foreign policy-making, having helped three Chinese presidents shape their policies. “He is seen as the only expert on American politics in the 25-member Polit Bureau and accompanied Mr. Xi on his state visit to the U.S. in 2015,” the daily observed.