US president-elect Joe Biden is likely to pursue a softer policy on China, focusing on cybersecurity and information technology challenges, as opposed to the “hard containment” direction favored by US President Donald Trump, an academic said yesterday.
At a seminar hosted by the Prospect Foundation in Taipei, Academia Sinica Institute of European and American Studies research fellow Lin Cheng-yi (林正義) and others shared their predictions for US policy in the Indo-Pacific region under the Biden administration.
Biden would likely maintain the current administration’s definition of China as a “strategic competitor,” Lin said.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Foundation chairman and former minister of foreign affairs Mark Chen (陳唐山) said there is concern as to whether the next administration would continue the current policy direction toward Taiwan.
Foundation executive director Lai I-chung (賴怡忠) said that many Taiwanese Trump supporters are focusing on his claims of election fraud, but Taiwan should look to see how its neighbors are responding.
This includes China, which is not waiting to make moves, he said.
Lin said that Biden’s continued use of the phrase “Indo-Pacific” signals a fundamental continuation of Trump’s “free and open Indo-Pacific” strategy with a focus on China, even while changing the phrasing.
Although Biden would likely keep the economic tools established under Trump’s policy, many challenges remain, he added.
Biden is to face internal pressure from the Democratic Party to reduce defense spending, coupled with lowering the frequency of troop deployments to the South China Sea, Lin said.
Lu Chun-wei (盧俊偉), a researcher at the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research, said that from an economic perspective, the problems facing China and the US are structural.
Biden is to be tasked with maintaining manufacturing growth, but the landscape remains unclear, Lu said, adding that economic relations in the Asia-Pacific region are complex and cannot be decided by a single factor.
The US would technically have no problem rejoining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, he said.
For Taiwan, supply chain reorganizations should strengthen its partnerships with ASEAN and other markets, Lu added, suggesting that Taiwan and Japan could work together in Southeast Asia.
Yen Chien-fa (顏建發), a professor of business administration at Chien Hsin University of Science and Technology, said that Biden would center his foreign policy around strengthening cooperation with US allies in the Indo-Pacific region to stem the expansion of Chinese influence.
As both US political parties and most Americans oppose China and support Taiwan, US policy toward Beijing would continue under Biden, reducing Beijing’s hope for the resurrection of former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger-style policy to merely wishful thinking, Yen said.
China is making its neighbors anxious with its expansions into the South China Sea and South Pacific, and across the first and second island chains, he added.
As the confrontation between the US and China takes shape, Taiwan would be deluged with increasingly underhanded threats and harassment, Yen said.
However, Taiwan should remain secure thanks to its domestic security and economic development, as well as external help from the US and neighboring democracies, which have not lost sight of Taiwan’s value, he added.
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