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Opinion | Possibility of Trump 2.0 should push China to recalibrate foreign policy
- Trump’s return, while expected to affect how China will carry out Xi’s reforms, could also work in Beijing’s favour geopolitically
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When China’s more than 350 senior officials converged in Beijing last month for the landmark third plenum of the Communist Party’s 20th Congress, it was all about President Xi Jinping.
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After they emerged from the four-day meeting held behind closed doors, which ended on July 18, they put a glowing stamp of approval on Xi’s core views and vision for how the party should build the world’s second largest economy into a modern socialist nation by 2035, with more than 300 reform measures to be completed by 2029.
China’s cheerleading state media have since fired on all cylinders, praising Xi as a visionary leader committed to reform and opening up, showing the way forward not only for China but the rest of the world.
Behind closed doors, however, Chinese leaders are believed to have spent quite some time talking about another man who could throw a spanner in the works, more than 10,000km away.
Donald Trump’s likely election to the White House for a second time in November and its ramifications for China was a hotly discussed and debated topic, according to one source familiar with the thinking of the Chinese leadership.
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After all, US-China relations took a decisive turn for the worse in 2018 when the then American president launched a trade war against China as part of his administration’s efforts to ramp up geopolitical rivalry with Beijing.
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