Opinion: Why Beijing isn't interested in Trump's 'Board of Trade'

Trump's China visit exposed a sharp divide between Washington's trade agenda and Beijing's preferred framework for ties. The exchanges showed China using the summit to set red lines on Taiwan and wider strategic competition.

In Short

• Chinese analysts saw US prioritising economic gains before mid-term polls
• Beijing framed summit around defining rules for relationship's next phase
• The 5B proposal sought formal trade mechanisms to manage future friction

As US President Donald Trump wrapped up his high-profile China visit — a first by a US president in nine years and the second face-to-face interaction between the Chinese and US leaders since Busan — the Chinese media and strategic circles went abuzz. Discussions regarding the American "Board of Trade" versus the Chinese "constructive strategic and stable relationship" are particularly worth noting.

Before the visit, Trump and his key officials had made it clear that trade and the economy were the 'core' agendas. The 5B (beef, beans, Boeing, the Board of Trade, and the Board of Investment) was the framework proposed by the US. The objective? Institutionalise some trade coordination mechanisms vis-a-vis China to reduce the risk of future friction spiralling out of control.

However, the US framework had few takers in China, who suspected it was yet another attempt by Trump to contain China's power in a cage of regulations. Instead, China floated a "constructive strategic and stable relationship" as the most important outcome of the summit, which will provide strategic guidance for China-US relations over the next three years — and maybe even longer.

Hong Nong, executive director of the Centre for US-China Studies and Special Expert for the Beijing Dialogue, explained in an article in Guancha that for Trump 2.0, the focus was on achieving short-term, demonstrable policy gains in procurement, investment, trade implementation, and even some geopolitical issues to appease his domestic constituencies before the mid-term elections.

But for China, she argued, the key focus was on seizing the "right to define" the next stage of the relationship, thereby putting the US and its unchecked power into a cage of regulations.

Notably, this is not the first time the US and China have clashed over who sets the rules in bilateral ties. China earlier rejected the US's G2 formulation and called for establishing a new type of power relationship in February 2012, which had limited appeal to the US. The "Board of Trade" versus "constructive strategic and stable relationship" debate only proves that little has changed since.

DRAWING RED LINES

The overwhelming consensus within Chinese strategic circles is that while the US talks about easing Sino-US relations, its actions don't quite match that. US actions in Panama, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran have led to many conspiracy theories in Beijing about Trump 2.0's secret plans to eliminate, one at a time, the members of the so-called "axis of evil" countries: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela.

In China's immediate neighbourhood, US efforts to strengthen the defence capabilities of the "first island chain", connecting Taiwan and the Philippines through Japan, have sent alarm bells ringing. Apart from that, in the year or so since Trump took office, Chinese strategists note that the scale of sanctions against Chinese companies has increased dramatically. They also accuse the US of encouraging or coercing other countries to abide by the sanctions against China, thereby reducing the space for Chinese goods.

Chinese strategic circles infer that since the setback in the trade war, the US is attempting to create a new type of containment strategy against China: one that ostensibly avoids confrontation, but actually engages in geopolitical, industrial, supply chain, and diplomatic containment efforts, particularly through third parties.

Given this escalatory backdrop, the Chinese objective during the visit was neither to achieve a 'reset' in ties nor to secure a substantial easing of strategic competition. Rather, the Chinese objective was to use the occasion to draw red lines and redefine the boundaries in bilateral ties, be it on the Taiwan issue or other global issues.

President Xi Jinping's strongly worded statement on Taiwan and the inclusion of the Middle East situation, the Ukraine crisis, and the Korean Peninsula in the official press releases make sense from this perspective.

(Antara Ghosal Singh is Fellow, ORF, New Delhi. She is a graduate from Tsinghua University, China, and has been a Chinese language fellow at the National Central University, Taiwan.)

(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author.)

- Ends