World expects Biden to ‘fix ties with China’
Global Times
1605662308000

Expectations around the world on Joe Biden to fix China-US ties from the damage caused by the Trump administration have risen, as Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger urged Biden to restore lines of communication with China.

8

Asia - and especially China - is an important part of the world for the US, said Lee on Tuesday at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, expressing his hope that Biden will develop a "framework for an overall constructive relationship with China," the Straits Times reported.
Chinese experts said Singapore is representative of the countries suffering from a difficult situation of being forced by the Trump administration to take sides between the US and China, and with the highly likely victory of Biden in the presidential election, more and more countries will urge the US to change, and stop forcing them to contain China to serve US hegemony.
China will surely seize any chance that can bring the most consequential bilateral ties in the world back to the track of cooperation, and will actively build connections with Biden's team to discuss how to fix the ties when the time is appropriate, said Jin Canrong, associate dean of the School of International Studies at the Renmin University of China in Beijing.
"Donald Trump is still the president, so China will be very careful. Otherwise, the Trump administration might be offended and make new troubles," Jin told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Within the US, expectations are also rising. Kissinger on Monday called on Biden to restore lines of communication with China.
"Unless there is some basis for some cooperative action, the world will slide into a catastrophe comparable to World War I," Kissinger said during the opening session of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, adding that military technologies available today would make such a crisis "even more difficult to control" than those of earlier times, according to the Bloomberg.
"America and China are now drifting increasingly toward confrontation, and they're conducting their diplomacy in a confrontational way," the 97-year-old former top US diplomat said.
Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times that only when the Biden administration seeks relatively stable and softer diplomatic ties with the world, especially with Asian countries, could it realize its priorities on saving the US from the pandemic, revive its economy or reach targets on climate change.
These goals are essential for Biden to win supports in either the 2022 congressional election or the 2024 presidential election, Li said.
All important channels between China and the US have been cut off under the Trump administration, but those channels are expected to resume gradually. The bilateral cooperation on fighting the pandemic, which is an important factor to rebuild mutual trust, will also be carried out, as it is an area that Biden needs to fulfill his commitment, Li noted.
China and the US are likely to restore lines of communication and cooperation on public health, global issues like climate change, regional security issues like the Korean Peninsula and Iran nuclear issues, and trade, which would the most difficult one, Jin said.