How far will Trump go in confronting China?

As a candidate and as a president, Donald Trump says a lot of things. His statements often contradict his earlier comments, allowing Trump’s fans and critics to pick from a wide range of statements, assembling the portrait they prefer. He can be portrayed as a big-spending populist with no worries about America’s entitlement system or deficit or national debt. He can simultaneously be seen as a callous tight-fisted conservative aligned with fiscally conservative Congressional Republicans, eager to cut vital programs. Trump is a casino-owning hedonist narcissist who cavorts with porn stars and who has never indicated animus to gays and lesbians, but he’s also the favorite of the socially-conservative white evangelical voters and Christian right leaders like Jerry Falwell Jr., who shower him with praise for standing for Biblical values. Trump is the isolationist-minded critic of “forever wars” always promising to bring the troops home… who’s also constantly pledging to “keep the oil” and willing to drone-strike the likes of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.

Perhaps the most consequential contradiction in Trump’s rhetoric comes on China. On trade and assigning blame for the coronavirus, Trump can roar like a lion. But on other actions by the Chinese government — ones that have traditionally brought scorn from an American president — Trump is a pussycat.

Trump is widely perceived as a critic and foe of China, and that assessment is accurate in one particular way. Perhaps the lone policy stance that Donald Trump has never wavered upon, going back to the 1980s, is an impassioned belief that US trade treaty negotiators of both Democratic and GOP administrations are a bunch of gullible idiots, and that he could do a much better job. It’s less that Trump opposes trade between nations than he is convinced Americans are getting screwed, and he doesn’t really see or care about the details. In 2018, he told the Wall Street Journal,  “I just hate to see our country taken advantage of. I would see cars, you know, pour in from Japan by the millions.” He called Japan “interchangeable with China, interchangeable with other countries. But it’s all the same thing.”

Trump is a vociferous critic of China on trade policy. Beyond that, when speaking off the cuff, Trump rarely if ever mentions Beijing’s abysmal record on human rights, military buildup, the expansion of its territorial waters through the construction of artificial islands in the South China sea, its Orwellian surveillance of its citizens and suppression of dissent, its concentration camps full of Uighurs, its former one-child policy, or any other authoritarian abuses. Trump indisputably thinks of China as an unfair trading partner. But beyond that, he doesn’t seem to think of China much at all.

Every now and then, Trump sounds like he admires or envies Beijing’s authoritarianism. He told Playboy in 1990, “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.” In 2016, Trump insisted he wasn’t endorsing their actions, but that “I said that was a strong, powerful government.”

We see exhibitions of Trump’s anger almost every day, furiously lashing out at critics, members of the news media, Democratic lawmakers, and Republicans who don’t toe the line. But for some reason, Trump never seems all that angry at China’s leadership or its policies, outside of trade.

For a man frequently denounced as a xenophobe, Trump can be bizarrely credulous and effusive about Chinese president Xi Jinping. In November 2019, as the protests in Hong Kong heated up, Trump explained in an interview with Fox and Friends, “look, we have to stand with Hong Kong. But I’m also standing with President Xi (Jinping). He’s a friend of mine. He’s an incredible guy.” In January, when the US reached a tentative de-escalation of its trade dispute with China, Trump declared on Twitter, “One of the many great things about our just signed giant Trade Deal with China is that it will bring both the USA & China closer together in so many other ways. Terrific working with President Xi, a man who truly loves his country. Much more to come!”

Perhaps most egregiously, on January 24 — just days after the Chinese government admitted what its doctors had known for at least three weeks, and perhaps more — Trump declared, “China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”

Perhaps Trump thinks he’s winning over Xi with flattery and public praise. But we’re in the fourth year of his presidency, and Xi hasn’t made many concessions.

Trump’s view on China is probably most accurately described as, “whatever he needs it to be that day.”

The policymakers around Trump seem to have a more coherent and consistent view. The new US National Security Strategy unveiled in December 2017 warned “China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity,” and that “China and Russia are developing advanced weapons and capabilities that could threaten our critical infrastructure and our command and control architecture… Every year, competitors such as China steal US intellectual property valued at hundreds of billions of dollars.” The NSS suggested a broad shift in US government thinking, abandoning the hope that China would become a partner for prosperity and stability and treating China as an adversary seeking to undermine American policies, interests, values and allies around the globe. But the official policies of the Trump administration that is laid out in white papers and what President Trump says on any given day have rarely been more than distant cousins.

How far will Trump go? The best answer is, “as far as his personal and political interests deem it necessary.” In the eyes of those who yearn for a reinstitution of the US-China partnership for stability, Trump will go way too far with his erratic antagonism. Anyone who’s looked at China’s early moves in response to the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 would conclude that Beijing is primarily responsible for the calamity that has befallen the world; Trump wants the American people to see China as so thoroughly responsible that there’s no blame left over for him or for the US government’s slow and stumbling response to the pandemic. From now until Election Day, Trump will paint China as Typhoid Mary, the full-spectrum scapegoat for all of America’s problems.

In the eyes of those who see Beijing as a reckless and malevolent actor on the world stage, the answer to “how far will Trump go?” is “nowhere near far enough.” Trump has proven far too many times that he’s easily charmed by flattery and tends to flinch in the face of real conflict with a foreign leader like Xi or Putin. A serious strategy to counter the dangers of a rising China would be a generational task and require more than long stretches of “executive time” that mostly generate angry tweets in response to what’s on the cable news. Building international alliances, clear-eyed risk assessment, exhibiting patience… these are not the strong suits of Donald Trump.

The global catastrophe of the virus set the stage for sweeping changes in the way the US and the rest of the world see and treat the authoritarian rulers in Beijing. Those changes may well occur, no matter what President Trump does. He could lead it, if his attention wasn’t so thoroughly captured by what was just said about him on Fox News or CNN.