Open questions | Taiwan the only issue that can push Washington and Beijing to war, ex-US diplomat says

‘It is all quite manageable’: former Trump-era official Susan Thornton says US-China competition is neither zero-sum nor existential

Reading Time:11 minutes

Published: 6:00am, 4 Nov 2024Updated: 11:05am, 4 Nov 2024

Susan Thornton is a retired senior American diplomat who for decades was at the US State Department where she worked on United States policy in Eurasia before becoming acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs during the Trump presidency. She is the director of the Forum on Asia-Pacific Security at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy and a senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Centre, Yale Law School. For other interviews in the Open Questions series, click here.

How do you expect the different outcomes of the US presidential election to affect US-China relations?

It seems clear that with [Democratic candidate Kamala] Harris, there would be general continuity with Biden administration policies toward China. This means maintenance of established communication mechanisms, as well as competitive policies.

The hard one is the other scenario, because nobody really knows what [Republican candidate Donald] Trump will do.

I think we know that Trump has complex feelings and attitudes about China. He, on the one hand, seems to continue to talk about his warm feelings about [Chinese] President Xi Jinping and his experiences and discussions with him.

In 2017, then US acting assistant secretary of state Susan Thornton speaks at a briefing in Washington, saying the US was pursuing a constructive and results-oriented relationship with China. Photo: Xinhua

On the other hand, he continues to talk about the problems he has with the US-China trade relations and the trade deficit.

SCMP Series

Open Questions – SCMP interviews with global opinion leaders

[ 1 of 35 ]