On December 17, 2024, nearly a month before he was sworn in as the President of the United States, at a press conference in Florida, Donald Trump described Chinese President Xi Jinping as “an amazing guy… the press hates when I say that, but he is an amazing person”.
He also said China and the US can together solve “all of the problems of the world”. He said Xi was his “friend” and the two had a “very good relationship until” the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world in late 2019. “COVID didn’t end the relationship but it was a bridge too far for me.”
On the same day of the Florida press conference, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said: “As long as China and the United States cooperate, many great things can be accomplished… Everyone is very concerned about China-US relations.” Wang added that the past engagements between the two sides, including at the level of presidents, have been “widely welcomed by all sectors of the two countries and the international community”.
One of those past engagements had taken place in Malta in September 2023 between Wang Yi and then US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
When then US President Joe Biden and Xi met in Peru in November 17, 2024, both leaders agreed that the relationship between Beijing and Washington is “the most important” in the entire world. They were right.
On it depends, to a great extent, whether we learn to live together on this planet and survive or whether we end up destroying each other through nuclear annihilation.
China does not want to replace American hegemony imposed through its nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad and its control of the main financial and economic global governance through the dollar and institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Financial Action Task Force and the World Trade Organisation.
The process of decolonisation is continuing, and “global” institutions mostly set up by the US after World War II to serve its interests are being challenged and alternative trade and financial institutions are being set up by the global majority, which is made up of 84% of the world population.
In Peru, Xi had told Biden that the Taiwan question, China’s system of democracy and understanding of human rights and China’s right to develop are four red lines for China, which must not be challenged or crossed. Will they be challenged or crossed?
The answer to this question depends on Trump and his administration. Without mentioning him by name and without saying that China is ready to work with the new US administration, XI had appealed to then President-elect Trump to “make the wise choice… and keep exploring the right way for the two major countries to get along well with each other”.
China does not want war with the US- Evarist Bartolo
It is difficult to predict how Trump and his team will behave towards China. Some of the people he has picked for his new administration view China with great hostility. Much will depend on Trump’s proposed hikes on his wide-ranging tariff programmes on Chinese imports; his position towards Taiwan; his relationship with the leaders of Japan and South Korea; and the military footprint he plans to pursue in the Indo-Pacific.
If Taiwan is reduced to another Ukraine by the US, a bridgehead threatening China’s security, the relationship between the US and China will worsen and the future for humanity will become even more dangerous than it is now.
Exemplary competition
If Trump wants the US to coexist peacefully with China, will the security and military establishment known as ‘the deep state’ allow him to? Presidents come and go but the deep state goes on for ever.
How will the different countries react if the US neoconservative elite imposes its agenda of world dominance and disregards the right of all countries to pursue their own path? More nations are seeking to control their own destiny by, among other things, forming blocs like BRICS to work together. They are not anti-US. They want to be pro-themselves, not forced to join supporter clubs of any great powers. They want their sovereignty respected.
The US and China can cooperate and compete without hurting each other. There is enough space for both of them in the world. Must the US seek the strategic defeat of China? How about learning from Confucius’s idea of “exemplary competition” in ancient Chinese archery where archers pursued excellence not by obstructing their opponents but by perfecting their own skill and character?
As Feng Zhang argued recently in ‘Responsible Statecraft’ on November 4, 2024, this could transform US-China rivalry into a force for mutual growth and global stability.
On December 23, 2024, then US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who had been leading the Biden administration’s effort to restrict China’s progress in developing and using advanced chips, told the Wall Street Journal that this effort is a “fool’s errand”. She added that investing in building a chip supply chain was more effective than export controls to counter tech rival Beijing.
Raimondo said export controls were mere “speed bumps” for China and had not slowed the country’s push for tech dominance or its progress in building semiconductor capabilities. “The only way to beat China is to stay ahead of them… We have to run faster, out-innovate them. That’s the way to win.”
This is certainly not the position of anti-China super-hawks in both the Republican and Democrat parties. They want not simply to contain China but to defeat it and bring about its collapse like the Soviet Union through the use of economic warfare and, if necessary, war.
China does not want war with the US. China believes that the relationship with the US can thrive within a framework of peaceful coexistence for the common good of the American and Chinese people and the rest of the world.
Evarist Bartolo is a former Labour foreign and education minister.