Articulate a Comprehensive, Coherent China Strategy

• President Trump should articulate a comprehensive, coherent China strategy that addresses U.S. objectives, the ways and means to achieve them, and how the strategy can mitigate drawbacks.
• While the Biden administration built on the first Trump administration’s China policy framework and the challenges China poses have bipartisan consensus, the bilateral and global context is far different from Trump’s first term.
• Trump’s China strategy should lay out whether, on the global stage, Washington will try to compete with China’s influence, contain Beijing, or go even further and adopt what in the U.S.-Soviet Cold War was called “rollback.”
• The administration should make clear how it intends to advance U.S. interests related to China—on a transactional or principle-based basis—and whether it will take a regional or global approach to the China challenge.
• President Trump should tap a top national security official to communicate his thinking, secure broad buy-in domestically and with allies, and put in place a high-level communication channel with Beijing to convey Trump’s thinking clearly to Xi Jinping.

Within his first 100 days of taking office, President Trump should articulate a comprehensive, coherent strategy for dealing with China. That strategy should clarify the goals of the administration’s China policy as well as the means for achieving them, and address how the strategy can mitigate any drawbacks.

During his first term, Trump accelerated a major shift in U.S. China policy from engagement to strategic competition. The parameters of that overall shift, though, changed over the course of the administration. Early on, in April 2017, Trump hosted Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago. Trump then traveled to China for a state visit in November 2017.¹ Relations started to deteriorate rapidly in 2018, however, when Trump imposed tariffs on China. Tensions over Huawei and other technology concerns, Beijing’s brutal crackdown in Hong Kong, and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic followed, leading to a near-total breakdown in relations during the final year of Trump’s first term.

President Biden’s administration retained Trump’s overall frame of strategic competition for U.S.-China relations but operationalized it in a different way. The Biden administration articulated frameworks such as “invest, align, compete” and controlled critical and emerging technologies using a “small yard, high fence” approach.² The Biden team also sought stability by working through communications channels with Chinese counterparts to prevent competition from veering into conflict, even as they implemented an array of tough measures.

Questions abound about the second Trump administration’s China policy, given the wide range of events and statements during Trump’s first administration and in the intervening years. Trump’s China policy presumably will seek to be tougher, but it is not clear exactly how that will be the case. Muscular rhetoric, combined with personal flattery of Xi, does not alone add up to a strategy for improving America’s competitive position relative to China and then using it to advance U.S. interests and values.³

A Trump administration China strategy should address three major sets of questions. The first set is about U.S. objectives. The strategy should lay out whether, on the global stage, Washington will try to compete with China’s influence or contain Beijing. Trump could go even further and adopt what in the U.S.-Soviet Cold War was called “rollback,” or trying to forcefully reduce rather than just limit China’s power and influence.⁴ Rollback arguably is what will be needed if Trump sets out to win strategic competition with China during his term in office, as some supporters have called for, as opposed to just managing it.⁵ Trump’s strategy also should explain whether it seeks to shape China’s domestic politics and economy, especially whether it endeavors to end CCP rule.

The second group of questions is about ways and means to fulfill Trump’s stated objectives. The strategy should explain whether Trump seeks to advance U.S. interests on a transactional basis—foreign policy as dealmaking—or by adopting a consistent set of principles from which specific implementation actions flow. In addition, the document should say whether the administration intends to focus regionally on the Indo-Pacific, or whether the contest with China is more global in nature.

The latter issue has special importance in the context of Beijing’s closer cooperation with authoritarian partners in Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Trump has characterized his grand strategic objective as to “prevent World War III.”⁶ He should explain the China-related parts of that agenda and, in doing so, shed light on whether he aligns more with the so-called primacist, prioritizer, or restrainer factions among his advisors.⁷

Third, the Trump team should spell out how the strategy can mitigate drawbacks, a natural part of any serious effort. The existence of such costs does not mean the strategy is unwise, but downsides should be accounted for up front. For example, elevating the trade deficit as the preeminent issue in U.S.-China relations could lead Beijing to think other issues, such as territorial disputes in the South China Sea, are negotiable rather than matters of principle. Also, Beijing will retaliate in kind to economic and technological coercion and has developed new tools to do so since Trump’s first term.⁸

If the administration plans to adopt a strategy of full-spectrum confrontation and extensive decoupling, one important downside is that allies and partners will be reluctant to sign on to it. Even America’s Asian allies in Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines will be highly averse to a campaign with those goals, as will close partners such as India and Singapore. Their hesitancy is strategically important, given that U.S.-China competition is a contest of coalitions rather than just a contest of individual countries. Direct confrontation also would preclude even basic levels of coordination with China on issues like combating fentanyl and global financial stability. (Genuine cooperation is practically nonexistent already.)

In terms of process, rather than conduct a lengthy interagency exercise, the strategy should be written by a top national security official whom the president believes can effectively crystallize and communicate his views. The resulting product should be briefed to congressional leaders first. It will be essential to build consensus between the executive and legislative branches for the way ahead. That is because, while there is consensus on the diagnosis of the China challenge, views often diverge on the prescription of what to do about it—disagreements that sometimes split the Republican caucus internally as much as with Democrats.⁹

Next, the results should be briefed to U.S. allies to ensure they understand the strategy’s logic and aims and get their buy-in to the extent possible. Then, either Trump or a senior national security official such as presumptive Secretary of State Marco Rubio or National Security Advisor Michael Waltz should present the finished strategy in the form of a speech.

Finally, the administration should reach out to China to put in place a high-level channel of communication with representatives empowered to speak for Trump and Xi, respectively. That channel should focus on directly conveying authoritative information—including the Trump administration’s China strategy—even if broader bilateral dialogue to prevent and resolve disputes breaks down. Going back to Henry Kissinger, such a channel historically linked the U.S. national security advisor with their Chinese counterpart. That role is currently played by Chinese Communist Party Politburo member, director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Trump’s and Xi’s personalistic leadership styles make this high-level channel suitable to the current era.

Articulating a framework for China policy will bolster U.S. national security by providing overarching and enduring guidance within which specific actions should be developed and implemented over time. Providing a clear strategy also will help mitigate the tendency of China’s at-times paranoid national security system to come up with its own interpretations of U.S. policy that do not necessarily align with what the administration intends.

There is bipartisan agreement that China constitutes the biggest geopolitical challenge facing the United States across nearly every aspect of foreign policy and many domestic policy issues, too. Charting a clear course for how the United States will deal with that challenge is essential for success—however Trump defines and pursues it.