By Greg Austin
Can we expect a better China policy from the U.S. if a Republican takes office in the White House in January 2017?
There is a popular view that Republican presidents have always done much better in managing the realpolitik of China policy than their Democratic Party peers. As noted in aForeign Policy article in 2013 by Daniel Drezner, exit polls in presidential voting between 1976 and 2012 have shown consistently higher trust by voters in Republican candidates for president for the conduct of foreign policy than in Democratic candidates.
Can we expect a better-performing China policy from the United States (whatever that might mean) if a Republican takes office in the White House in January 2017, almost mid-way through the 10-year, unelected term of China’s Xi Jinping?
Whatever one’s political inclinations, it may be useful — one year out from the election — to contemplate the long term trend of presidential China policy and how partisan politics may re-shape that if a Republican wins 2016.
One issue about the long term trend worthy of some contemplation now is the relationship between elite opinion (business and security specialists) in the Republican Party and party factions tied to special ideological interests or biased understandings of China. My assessment would be that until now, in Republican administrations going back to Nixon, the elites and their pragmatism, supported by a rather clear-eyed intelligence community, have always dominated in China policy. The grassroots have had little influence on this area of policy. This has been deeply reassuring to those of us who live in the Pacific.
At the same time, I would also caution that perhaps under George W. Bush, the dominance of the pragmatists was much less secure. His administration did a workmanlike job in managing some very sticky China crises (such as the P3C crew detention by China in 2001) as well as shifting power relativities (China rising). Most impressive was Bush’s management of the Taiwan situation under its pro-independence President Chen Shui-bian.
So how was this possible when the strategic policy of the Bush presidency was marked by the strong influence of neo-conservatives, whose main reason for living seemed to have been the belief that China was little better than the devil incarnate? They seemed to hope for a reversal of U.S. China policy under Bill Clinton so that Washington would more explicitly recognize the Communist government in Beijing as fundamentally antagonistic to U.S. interests, and not as a “partner” of some kind.
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