By Nurain Sirajuddin
As the world acknowledged the relationship between two superpower countries, long-time rivals, China and the US will not be shifting into friendlier terms, even under the administration of newly – elected president, Joe Biden. The bilateral trade hostility between these two countries engaging in today’s cold war does not seem to find an end point, as Biden will continue to resume the country’s policy in China to maintain containment of power and coalition. US’ containment strategy is by suppressing the economic power of China through trade war and its domination over communication technology such as the 5G infrastructure. Meanwhile, the coalition is to support the strategy of containment attentive enough to gain a full support from Australia, Japan and India to pursue an action in acquiring and developing the China-focused Quad security (Zelleke, 2020).
From the economic perspectives, China will lose its largest source of economy as it is one of the major exporters to the US and contributes up to 20% of China’s GDP. This trade war will impact China’s access to components of US technology and bad implications to the US dollar currency can lead to loss and financial instability(Roach, 2020). However, the restriction to access the chips made with US technology was decided by the Trump’s administration making it impossible for Huawei to both source and penetrate their chips to the US market (Wong, 2020). As a consequence, China is set to continue developing a critical, industrial hub for most international companies in the conceivable future (Crabtree, 2020). This rivalry will also give a huge impact to the US when it will also lose its source of low-cost goods and materials. China also serves as a treasury of securities for the US and the third largest country for US external demand in export market, trade and investment (Roach, 2020; Lester and Zhu, 2020).
Moreover, Biden will continue US’ policies on China that has been introduced during the Trump administration but will seek to arrange and choose more effective and intelligible approach to reframe the US-China relations. (Barrett, 2020). Besides that, Biden also has planned two policies and projected a $300 billion fund on “Innovate in America” to enhance the research and development industry in US while $400 billion fund on “Buy American” in order to give support in purchasing the domestic goods (Barrett, 2020).
According to Johnson and Gramer (2020), the results of the coronavirus pandemic, most of the multinational companies will change their business model and business chain to US. These companies need to change its business relations with China in different ways, since the defeat of Trump means there is no more ‘America First’ sentiment. Hence, US need to ensure that the support from the multinational companies and other countries will be with the US.
As a conclusion, the relations between China and US will not reach an end anytime soon, as both countries need each other for their interests in economy, military and technology. Some of the solutions that will help foster good international communication between the two countries could be something similar to the ‘Belt and Road’ strategy, which has allowed China maintain good trade relations and forming new market with other countries (Zhu, Yang & Feng, 2018). The Chinese, under China Innovation will continue to improve their product in order to compete and capitalize in the foreign market, to conduct better bilateral negotiations with the US while also applying international regulations between both countries (Zhu, Yang & Feng, 2018). Hence, both countries need to take actions and efforts to ensure the trade war will come to an end and have a good relationship in trade to avoid disorder in global trade.
REFERENCES
Barrett, E. (2020). Why a Biden presidency won’t end the US-China Trade war. Fortune. Retrieve from https://fortune.com/2020/11/09/joe-biden-us-china-trade-war/
Crabtree, J. (2020). US-China decoupling is much harder than Donald Trump thinks. Nikkei Asia. Retrieved from https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/US-China-decoupling-is-much-harder-than-Donald-Trump-thinks
Johnson, K., & Gramer, R. (2020). The Great Decoupling. Foreign Policy. Retrieved from https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/14/china-us-pandemic-economy-tensions-trump-coronavirus-covid-new-cold-war-economics-the-great-decoupling/
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Wong, J. (2020). The US-China Tech War Won’t End Under Biden. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-china-tech-war-wont-end-under-biden-11607939916
Zelleke, A. (2020). What is the end game of US-China competition?, The Diplomat. Retrieved from https://thediplomat.com/2020/11/what-is-the-end-game-of-us-china-competition/
Zhu, Z., Yang, Y., & Feng. S. (2018). Trade War between China and US. Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research (ASSEHR), 206, 423-426.