Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials quietly believe that a second Donald Trump presidency would be more dangerous to them than a Kamala Harris administration, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
The Biden-Harris administration’s relationship with Beijing has been marred with tensions in recent years over diplomatic, economic and national security disputes. But Chinese officials would seemingly still rather have Harris win in November over Trump because they worry that the former president will open up another trade war against China, officials told the WSJ.
“Chinese officials and scholars, in private conversations over many months, are largely exceptionally wary of a Trump victory,” Richard McGregor, China expert at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, told the WSJ.
Those worries are largely kept quiet. Publicly, Chinese officials maintain a stance of neutrality toward the U.S. elections. Chinese President Xi Jinping wrote in a letter last week that China had always handled relations with the U.S. with “mutual respect” and said that Beijing “is willing to work with the United States as partners and friends.”
“The presidential elections are the United States’ own affairs,” a spokesman from the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We hope that whoever gets elected will be committed to growing sound and stable China-U.S. ties.”
Beijing wants whoever the next president is to take a predictable stance toward relations and dial back the U.S.’ tough-on-China stance. Privately, officials felt that standard was better reflected in President Joe Biden over Trump and thought his reelection would be better for China, according to the WSJ.
After Biden dropped out of the race in July, Beijing felt the same about Harris, officials told the WSJ.
“Under Trump, we had a bad experience,” senior CCP diplomat Liu Jianchao bemoaned during a closed-door session with U.S. think tanks earlier in the year.
The concerns of a second Trump term among Chinese officials stem from fears he will launch a second trade war against China, as he did in his first term, according to the WSJ.
Trump issued a sweeping set of tariffs against China during his first term — adding a tax to imports coming in from the country — in a bid to encourage domestic U.S. investment and compel China to buy more American goods.
Xi and those and his orbit became exhausted in trying to maneuver the trade war and Trump’s demands, according to the WSJ. Trump has weighed the idea in his second term to issue a 60% tariff against incoming Chinese goods, which economists at UBS have predicted could mark a 2.5% blow to China’s GDP growth over a year-long period.
Trump has also recently weighed the idea of using the threat of tariffs to deter China from invading Taiwan, even musing that he would completely halt trade relations if the island is taken by force, which has been received extremely poorly in Beijing.
“I would say: If you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you”—meaning impose tariffs—“at 150% to 200%,” Trump told the WSJ in an interview on Thursday.
The Trump and Harris campaigns did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Flickr/Official White House Photo by Carlos Fyfe)
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