(Lu Cheng-fung, Associate Professor, Department of International and Mainland Affairs, National Quemoy University)
The US presidential election is scheduled for November 5, 2024, but the first televised debate took place earlier than usual at the end of June. It proved to be the biggest obstacle in President Joe Biden’s quest for reelection, one that was difficult to overcome. Although Biden claimed to be well-prepared, his performance was so embarrassing and full of gaffes that the mainstream media and key party figures felt that they could not ignore the impact of his health on his leadership, and pressurized Biden to withdraw from the race. Countries and allies not only witnessed, but also more profoundly realized, the need to prepare for Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House.
In early July, Trump narrowly escaped a gunshot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, and returned to the race triumphantly as the chosen one. 48% of Pennsylvania voters were willing to support Trump, and in Virgina, where Biden originally had a 10% lead, 45% of voters now said they would support Trump after the shooting. Under public pressure, 23 days after the first televised debate and only 107 days before the election, Biden announced via social media that he was withdrawing from the race and called on the Democrats to unite in support of his own vice president, Kamala Harris, to take over the White House. However, Kamala Harris has always lagged behind Biden in the polls, and it will be extremely difficult for her to win the support of the voters. After Biden’s withdrawal, the Republican Party has intensified its criticism of Biden’s self-professed lame-duck presidency, arguing that Biden’s final term of office poses great challenges and risks to the US. The political polarization and confrontation in the US has become very serious.
Trump, who has vowed to take back the White House since losing his 2020 re-election bid, has demonstrated a tenacious will to do so, despite being embroiled in lawsuits with numerous staffers and cronies. Polls by major media outlets show that Trump has long surpassed the popularity ratings of President Joe Biden, who has been the worst president in history, according to Trump’s fiery criticisms of Biden’s leadership and policies. To help Trump return to the White House and his campaign team’s goal is to not only win the presidency, but to return to power in a sweeping fashion. In mid-July, Trump was formally nominated at the Republican National Convention and announced that the vice presidential candidate would be Ohio US Senator, J.D. Vance. Vance, who is 38 years old, raised poor, also upholds the banner of Make America Great Again, in the hope that this movement would be consolidated and passed on to unite and strengthen the Republican Party. The 66-page policy platform passed at the Republican Convention was clearly intended by Trump to reflect his policy views and positions, and he personally participated in the drafting of some of the text, but deliberately used vague language on sensitive issues, or even did not include them. During the party’s convention, Trump proved to voters that he is more mature and more qualified for the job after 10 years in politics.
In his first term, Trump strongly and indiscriminately raised tariffs on allies, pressed for market opening, demanded greater defense spending and responsibility, returned to the traditional unilateralist diplomacy that the Republican Party has traditionally favored, and withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership after he took office, leaving US allies to suffer a great deal. Looking back at Trump’s presidency of the White House, it can be seen that before the midterm election in 2018, the US policy towards China has gradually and clearly steered towards “strategic competition.” Examples include: the US Department of State’s first Indo-Pacific Strategy report and the inclusion of Taiwan’s new southbound policy; the Trump administration regards China as a strategic rival, and launched a trade and technology war; sanctioned ZTE and Huawei, proposed a free and open Indo-Pacific strategy, issued sanctions against Chinese companies involved in the construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea, and frozen the bank accounts of high-ranking generals of the People’s Liberation Army who have procured weapons from Russia, and when it was unable to stop Beijing from implementing the “Hong Kong version of the National Security Law,” the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on China-related individuals, such as Carrie Lam, Luo Huining and Zhang Xiaoming. In 2020, the last year of Trump’s administration, the US Congress has proposed more than 200 bills related to China, about twice as many as the previous Congress, and the percentage of US citizens who dislike China has reached 73%. It is quite clear that the US government and the opposition are taking a hard line against China. The succeeding Biden administration’s Chinese policy not only continued the hard line of the Trump administration, but also increased the number of bills and expanded the scope of the crackdown.
The Trump administration also required Chinese officials and journalists in the US to register as foreign agents, closed the Confucius Institutes, accused the Chinese consulate general in Houston of being a technological theft stronghold. Trump initially blamed the Wuhan as the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, which spread globally from China. In 2020, with the global as well as US outbreaks becoming more difficult to control and Trump’s reelection campaigns being in a quagmire, the Trump administration’s cabinet secretaries gradually separated the Chinese Communist Party from the Chinese people, and wanted them to change the party. Several cabinet secretaries also addressed Xi Jinping as general secretary rather than president since August 2020. In May 2020, the White House presented a report to Congress on “Strategic Competitive Approaches to China,” which was also updated by the Biden administration. In his first term, Trump not only wanted the global supply and production chain to be decoupled from China, but also believed that if the US could not change China, China would change the world. At the same time, Trump has praised and demanded that TSMC set up a plant in the US, cooperated in not exporting chips to Huawei, and released $15 billion in arms sales to Taiwan in four years, which is more than the $14 billion that the Obama administration sold to Taiwan in its eight-year term. Recently, Trump accused Taiwan of stealing the US chip industry and demanded for protection fees, and that Taiwan should continue to show its determination to defend itself. In fact, Taiwan has received strong support and affirmation from the US in terms of national defense autonomy and military reform since the Tsai Ing-wen administration.
If Trump were to return to the White House, the strategic competition between the US and China would continue. After all, Xi Jinping has already begun his third term in office, and his party, government, and military powers have become more centralized, while Trump has long recognized Xi as the emperor, and even teased that the US should amend its constitution to abolish the term of office of the president, just as the Chinese Communist Party has done. If the new US administration weakens in its anti-China and anti-communist stance in the future, a return to a better America or America’s greatness may be reduced to mere election slogans. Since the lifting of pandemic restrictions in China, despite the continuing economic downturn, China’s continued challenge to the US in the areas of science and technology, economy, politics, military, diplomacy, the established international free order, and the rule of law will be one of the most important indicators in determining Beijing’s strategic interactions with Washington.
On the first day of Biden’s presidency in 2021, Chinese warplanes, bombers and ships openly conducted missile attack simulation drills against the US aircraft carrier USS Roosevelt, which was sailing in the Bashi Channel and the South China Sea. In the future, if the new government in Washington is formed, and if Beijing once again tests Washington’s determination and bottom line in defending the Taiwan Straits and regional stability and peace, Trump’s strategic competition with China may go beyond the Biden administration’s control of strategic competition and the establishment of guardrails, and move forward in the direction of winning strategic victories.
It is worth mentioning that in January 2021, as soon as the Trump administration left office, Beijing believed that 28 people should be held primarily responsible for seriously violating the sovereignty of China, and thus imposed sanctions on several key Trump administration officials: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs David R. Stilwell, Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger, Health Secretary Alex M. Azar, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Keith Klatch, and Secretary of the Department of State John Kerry. Keith J. Krach, U.N. Ambassador Kelly Craft, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Trump advisor Steven Bannon, among others on the list. However, several of these people may still return to the new Trump administration as senior policymakers, and how Beijing responds in the future will test the wisdom of policymaking, as well as the development of interactions between Washington, Beijing, and Taipei. After all, several of the people on the public list have visited Taipei after leaving office, and have demonstrated a high level of support for Taiwan’s democracy and security.
（Translated to English by Chen Cheng-Yi）
