The Recent and Predictable Future: The U.S. Posture Toward China During and After the Presidential Election Campaign

Due to the serious perverse actions of the Trump administration in the fields of strategic rivalry, political/ideological confrontation, diplomatic exchanges and trade war between China and the United States as well as in that of global governance, Biden’s new administration is bound to make revisions somewhat and somehow. However, the current posture of the United States toward China is not only strong and enduring international structural dynamics in many aspects, but also multilateral strong and enduring domestic political and social ones. Therefore, its revision is to be necessarily quite partial and limited, and the confrontation and competition with China in some other areas will probably intensify. To a large extent, the trend of China–US relations after the US election could be influenced or even shaped by China, so China’s strategy and policy and appropriate adjustment are of great importance. China needs to take the initiative to avoid military conflicts with the United States, treating it as the essential highest common interest and the vital “common denominator” and to strive for a sort of pragmatic, focused and concrete dialogue or negotiation with the Biden administration as soon as possible after it took office.