Having attained a remarkable success with its containment policy towards the Soviet Union, nothing seemed more natural for the United States than to put in motion the same policy in relation to a rival China.
Even if not labelling its China strategy in this manner, since 2008 Washington has been containing that country’s geostrategic expansion, regional influence, technological advancement and trade might. Obama, Trump and Biden, have all followed the same route. Whomever wins the current presidential race next November 5, will certainly follow suit. For a country so utterly fractured as the U.S., this in itself represents a significant outlier.
Obama’s Containment
The first manifestation of this policy came by way of Obama’s “pivot to Asia”. Through it, the United States made evident that it would not sit aside while China challenged the rules-based international order under its stewardship. The pivot materialised through a so-called Asia-Pacific security and prosperity area for the 21st century, which was supported by two broad objectives. The first of them emphasised security and aimed at the gathering in a common front of the United States and its regional allies. Their military presence aimed at deterring China’s expansive footprint in the region. The second objective, economic in nature, pursued what Obama called “our shared prosperity”. This translated into an enlarged trans-Pacific trade and economic liberalisation agreement: The so called Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This pivot policy was labelled by a well-known regional analyst as America’s most ambitious strategic doctrine since Truman committed America to contain the Soviet Union (White, 2011).
The security leg of the pivot entailed, among other things, shifting a majority of America’s naval resources from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This translated into the intention of moving to that area, 60 percent of nuclear and high-tech naval vessels, including at least six aircraft carriers. It included, at the same time, plans to surround China with stealth planes: B-2 bombers and F-22 and F-35 fighter planes. Meanwhile, bases in the region were to be expanded in size, while a new base was opened in Darwin, Australia. Regional allies, with particular reference to Japan, were encouraged to rearm. As part of that strategy the U.S. Navy challenged, through its periodical presence, Chinese unbridled claims over the South China Sea, thus preserving access to waterways “governed by international law”. At the same time, the U.S. Air Force challenged China’s “Air Identification Zone” over the East China Sea (Woodward, 2017, Chapter 3).
The economic leg of the pivot, the TPP, aimed at a 12-country comprehensive Free Trade Agreement. One, that implicitly, if not explicitly, excluded China. This, through a provision that considered state-owned companies as expressions of unfair competition. China’s Pacific neighbourhood was thus to be tied to the U.S., by way of an economic integration mechanism whose avowed objective was to reduce Beijing’s economic clout upon it. Unsurprisingly, some Chinese analysts considered the Trans-Pacific Partnership to be the equivalent to an economic NATO (Woodward, 2017, Chapter 1).
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration tried to curtail Beijing’s economic leadership upon its region by boycotting the participation of its European and Asian allies in China’s sponsored Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). This multilateral development institution, whose objective was to support infrastructural developments in the Asia-Pacific region, had been initially proposed by China in 2013 and was formally launched in Beijing in 2014. From its inception, Washington opposed this project. This, as it could multiply Beijing’s financial influence over the fastest growing region of the planet. This boycott, however, proved to be an utter failure, as Washington’s allies were not ready to eschew the opportunities represented by this golden goose project. Within another context, a 2011 U.S. bill forbade bilateral contacts between NASA and Chinese scientists. (Toro Hardy, 2020, pp. 57-58 and 247-249).
Trump’s Containment
The Trump Administration contorted but not abandoned containment towards China. The President’s first act in the White House was to withdraw his country from the TPP. This fell under his drive of abandoning Obama’s signature legacies. The security leg of the pivot policy remained, however, very much in place. In fact, Asia-Pacific, as well as Israel, represented clear exceptions within Trump’s neo-isolationist foreign policy. As a result, even if Obama’s “shared prosperity” notion disappeared from the equation, the rest was kept in. This subjected many countries in the area to the predicament of having to choose between China’s economic opportunities and America’s security offers. For some, this led to no other option than accepting the former. Others, though, choose to have it both ways: Sheltering under America’s security umbrella while benefiting from China’s economic clout.
The Trump administration announced a military build-up in what began to be labelled as the Indo-Pacific region. This included deploying additional submarines and destroyers to the region, and expanding or adding new bases in Japan and Australia. At the same time, talks to install air force long-range strike assets in South Korea were held. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy followed up with its “freedom of navigation patrols” in Chinese claimed areas within the South China Sea, while the U.S. Air Force kept challenging China’s “Air Defense Identification Zone” over the East China Sea. In relation to Taiwan, American warships navigated on several occasions through the Taiwan Strait, while the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act made strong affirmations of support to the island, and substantial arms sales to it took place. Meanwhile, the President of Taiwan was given a high-level treatment in its transit stops in the United States (Woodward, 2017, Chapter 1; Reuters, 2019; Sutter, 2020, p. 226).
It must be added, though, that Trump’s transactional approach to foreign affairs, where security considerations became frequently subordinated to trade and money, distorted its relations with indispensable regional allies. In 2019, he not only asked Japan to increase fourfold its annual contribution for the privilege of hosting 50,000 U.S. troops in its territory, but requested South Korea to pay 400 percent more for the 28.500 American soldiers in its soil. This, amid the Chinese increasing boldness. In its relations with India, a fundamental U.S. ally within any strategy of containment to China, Trump overtly put geostrategic considerations behind trade ones. (World Politics Review, 2019).
Jointly with security considerations, the Trump administration advanced containment through an ambitious trade war and by targeting selected Chinese high-tech developments. Trump’s intent on coercing China to abandon its industrial policies as a precondition for trade, represented non-other than economic containment. Constraining trade with China by way of unattainable demands, could only be explained as a means of slowing and burdening its economy. In May 2019, Washington imposed 25 percent tariffs on US$250 billion worth of China’s exports to the United States, while subsequently burdening it with an additional 10 percent over the remaining US$300 billion. As a result of these tariffs, by August 2019 up to 41 percent of American companies manufacturing in that country had moved away from it or were planning to do so.
In August 2019, President Trump threatened to use its executive powers to forbid American companies to keep doing business in China, arguing that the Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 allowed him to do so. In November 2020, Trump signed an Executive Order banning American citizens from investing in Chinese firms that had ties with China’s military (Klein, 2019; CNN, 2019; CNN, 2020).
The Trump administration also targeted Chinese high-tech companies, with Huawei topping the list. Although it was argued that the escalating measures against that company were based on national-security concerns, it was difficult not to see them as part of an overall strategy. Especially so, as slowing Huawei’s lead in the once in a generation 5G technology, hindered the Chinese command in that strategic sector. With Huawei likely controlling up to 60 percent of the 5G market, eroding its position clearly became a containment objective. (Drezner, 2019; Toro Hardy, 2020, pp. 242-244).
But not only Huawei was targeted by the Trump administration. Through different means, Trump tried to stall China’s innovation process. The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act included provisions that expanded the size and power of the Committee on Foreign Investments and other legal measures, to protect U.S.’ high technology from being acquired by China. Meanwhile, the acquisition by that country of America’s produced microchips was also targeted. While leading in electronic products, China showed itself unable to master the area of superconductors: Its Achilles heel in the field of electronics. In 2018, Washington brought the Chinese giant ZTE to the brink of bankruptcy, through an export ban of America’s microchips to the company. In the same manner, the Trump administration tried to blacklist the U.S.’ operations of the popular Chinese owned video sharing app TikTok, attempting to force its sale to a U.S. company. American courts, however, sided against Trump’s ban, ruling that this was a politically motivated move. (Sutter, 2020, p. 225; Toro Hardy, 2020, pp. 244-246; Allyn, 2021).
The Trump Administration also undertook a rhetorical demonization of the Chinese regime. One, that brought up to mind Reagan’s demonization of the Soviet Union. This went from American authoritative documents such as the 2017 National Security and National Defense Strategy and the 2018 National Defense Strategy (which presented China as a “predatory” strategic rival that threatened all that America held dear), to the U.S. Trade Representative characterization of China as an “existential threat” to the United States. It also included the “Chinese virus” label to Covid-19, and the “genocide” label applied to the regime’s activities in Xinjiang. (Swaine, 2018; Sutter, 2020, pp. 220, 221).
Biden’s Containment
Less rhetorically demonising than Trump’s administration, Biden became more challenging to China by presenting a more articulated front. Biden foresaw a struggle with China that could have only one winner. In his view, China was less interested in coexistence than in dominance. As a consequence, the task of the United States was to blunt those ambitions. This included building strengths both at home and abroad. The former responded to his conviction that only by strengthening the domestic front, would his country be able to successfully compete with China.
In this last regard, Biden was able to pass a group of transformational laws. Among them, the Infrastructure Investment and Job Act, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. Together, these legislations allow for a government investment of a trillion dollars in the modernization of the country’s economy and its re-industrialization, including the consolidation of its technological leadership, the updating of its infrastructures and the reconversion of its energy matrix towards clean energy. Private investments derived from such laws have been huge, with the sole CHIPS Act having produced investment pledges of more that 100 billion dollars. These domestic endeavours projected an image of strength and strategic purpose in relation to America’s competition with China. (Toro Hardy, 2023).
Abroad, Biden kept Trump’s Indo-Pacific concept, stressing that preserving it free and open was a top priority. This translated into the strengthening and expansion of the country’s Indo-Pacific alliances. Among the geostrategic initiatives created or reinforced under Washington’s stewardship, during this period, have been the following: A duly energised Quad; the emergence of AUKUS; NATO’s approach to the Indo-Pacific region; the tripartite Camp David’s security agreement between Japan, South Korea and the U.S.; a revamped defence treaty with the Philippines; an increased military cooperation with Australia; Hanoi’s growing strategic closeness to Washington; the establishment of a U.S.-Japan joint command to its military forces and the agreement to create a shared littoral regiment equipped with state-of-the-art anti-ships missiles; the tacit abandonment of America’s several decades’ old policy of “strategic ambiguity” in relation to Taiwan, by way of an unambiguous support to the island and by the formulation of military doctrine for going in its defence in case of invasion.
The U.S. Navy followed up with its “freedom of navigation patrols” in Chinese claimed areas within the South China Sea, while the U.S. Air Force kept challenging China’s “Air Defense Identification Zone” over the East China Sea. Moreover, in 2021, America’s navy undertook for some time monthly “routine Taiwan Strait transits”. (Toro Hardy, 2024; Sanger 2021).
Meanwhile, on the economic front, Biden was instrumental in the promotion of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity and of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment & India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. Although a far cry from what its leading membership within the Trans-Pacific Partnership would have represented in terms of its Asian economic clout, these initiatives have restored the U.S.’ economic presence in that continent. (Goodman and Reinsh, 2022).
On the other hand, although Biden proclaimed his disagreement with Trump’s approach to China, he proved to be in no hurry to reverse the tariffs imposed on that country. Much to the contrary, his administration showed its disposition to use tariffs as a tool to fight Chinese unfair practices. Similarly, Biden kept in place and refined Trump’s prohibitions on doing business with Huawei and a long list of Chinese technology companies and military affiliated businesses, adding new names to that list. Meanwhile, he revoked China’s Telecom right to operate in the United States, citing national security concerns. As an extension, Biden enforced export controls, so that American companies or technologies did not fuel China’s development of critical technologies. The best expression of this policy was the superconductors’ blockade imposed upon that country. (The Economist, 2021).
Finally, Biden has slapped successive sanctions on Chinese officials and entities for human right abuses in the Xinjiang region and for the crackdown on political freedoms in Hong Kong. The latter also included Hong Kong officials.
Harris or Trump: Following suit
As seen, thus, since the first Obama period, the United States has shown consistency of purpose in containing China. Although lacking a road map in this regard, as it happened in relation to the Soviet Union, there has been an unmistakable continuity in following this objective. For a country so utterly divided, this consistency represents a significant outlier. Moreover, together with America’s support towards Israel, this is the only foreign policy issue where the arrival of Kamala Harris or Donald Trump to the Withe House would not imply substantive differences. Although Trump would be, no doubt about it, more transactional and less attached in his relations with America’s allies in the region, it is doubtful that he would lessen containment towards China.
Actually, if he wins a trade war would probably follow. Harris, on her part, would be more organised and articulated, while relaying much more on America’s regional alliances. Both candidates however, as reported by The Economist, would soften Biden’s stance in relation to the defence of Taiwan. While Trump has implied that the island is not worth defending, Harris’ position seems to represent a reversion to the pre-Biden policy of “strategic ambiguity”. (The Economist, 2024). Essentially, whoever wins will follow suit.
Author: Alfredo Toro Hardy, PhD – Retired Venezuelan career diplomat, scholar and author. Former Ambassador to the U.S., U.K., Spain, Brazil, Ireland, Chile and Singapore. Author or co-author of thirty-six books on international affairs. Former Fulbright Scholar and Visiting Professor at Princeton and Brasilia universities. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations and a member of the Review Panel of the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center.
(The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World geostrategic Insights).