Is US President Donald Trump China’s worst nightmare or a dream come true? He is both, but not in equal measure. In the near term, his tariff-led approach to trade would cause problems for Beijing.
However, in just a few weeks he has done more damage to the liberal international order, the cohesion of the democratic West, and the US’ global standing, than all the combined efforts to undermine them in the entirety of the Cold War. This goes beyond the wildest dreams China’s leaders could have had.
The tariffs already levied are serious enough, and Beijing cannot but see them as a harbinger of more to come.
Illustration: Yusha
Unlike during his first term, this time Trump seems prepared to deliver the threats he makes. With China’s economy already misfiring, an intensified trade war is the last thing Beijing needs, despite the bravado of its diplomats.
However, the tariffs and even a full-blown trade war amount to a short to medium-term challenge. Xi Jinping (習近平) would order China to stand fast, so it would. The price to pay would be high, but it would be more than compensated by the gifts Trump is unwittingly presenting to Xi, particularly over the longer term.
Trump’s proposal for peace in Ukraine, apparently largely on Russian terms, and his naked ambition over Canada and Greenland are of enormous value to China. He has damaged relations with US allies in North America and Europe, and indicated the US would step back from commitments to international projects such as the US Agency for International Development, the UN and the WHO.
Why is this cherished in Beijing? It is because China has developed a global strategy based on “Xi Jinping Thought.” Its goal is to fulfil the “China Dream” of national rejuvenation by 2049, the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Trump has made Xi’s dream more realizable.
In plain English, Xi’s strategic objective is to make China great again on Chinese terms. More specifically, it aims to “restore” China to a position of global pre-eminence, which Xi believes China regularly had when it was the most powerful, rich, innovative and civilized country at different times in history.
The route to restoration is through what Xi calls the “democratization of international relations.” Once achieved, China would lead the world to forge the “common destiny for humankind,” guided by Xi’s suite of three global initiatives, on development, security and civilization.
This is not about creating an alternative world order from scratch to replace the US-led liberal international order put in place at the end of the World War II. Rather, it is about transforming the existing order into one that is Sino-centric with the support of the global south. It means making sure the UN system prioritizes the interests and desires of the global south, represented by its leader, China, over that of the West.
Doing so represents “democratization” as a clear majority of UN member states, and the overwhelming majority of humanity, are in the global south. While China’s narrative does have appeal in the global south, particularly among leaders of autocracies, it gets almost nowhere in rich democratic countries.
For eight decades the democracies had mostly stood by the US despite occasional major quarrels, such as the Suez Crisis in 1956 or the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The solidarity of the democratic West helped it win the Cold War and reshape the world afterward. Chinese diplomatic efforts to get European countries to split with the US after Trump first put forth his Ukraine plan had no effect.
For China to successfully transform the UN system it must show that the existing international system is so broken that it needs reconstruction based on a better blueprint. For all its efforts in the global south, including the massive investment of resources under the Belt and Road Initiative, China has only made limited headway.
By humiliatingly intimidating Ukraine into peace talks, dismissively pushing European nations around and largely accepting Russia’s terms for ending the war, Trump has fundamentally changed US relations with its allies. He has delivered what Chinese diplomacy cannot achieve.
Trump has made the US’ NATO allies realize they cannot rely on it. He posed an existential threat to the US’ closest ally, Canada, and challenged the sovereign rights of another NATO ally, Denmark. It demonstrated to the world that as the “shining house on the hill” the US now radiates not brightness, hope and a shining example, but darkness driven by narrow self-interest.
Above all, Trump has enabled China to accuse the US of hypocrisy. Beijing can now assert that the US has revealed its true nature, and would use the liberal international order to put the US first. Therefore, it is an international order that is unfit for the 21st century, one that requires fundamental changes. This fits Xi’s global strategy to a T.
While Xi’s efforts to persuade the global south to embrace China’s push to transform how the UN system works had been making only slow progress, they have now been turbocharged by Trump.
With the poorest and weakest in the global south beginning to suffer from the cutting off of US humanitarian aid, China’s call to democratize international relations gains traction by the day. No one has made the Chinese case better than Trump.
In putting the US first, Trump has done more than Xi has ever managed to make China great again. Xi’s China Dream has not yet come true, but with Trump’s help, it has made a great leap forward.
Steve Tsang is director of the China Institute at SOAS University of London and co-author of The Political Thought of Xi Jinping.
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