Agathe Demarais is a senior policy fellow on geoeconomics at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a Foreign Policy columnist. She recently argued in that journal (with a clear anti-Trump tilt)-that “China is Rooting for Trump”
Although her arguments are framed within the standard Global Western casting of China as a revisionist threat to the US-led ordering of the world, the case advanced is thought provoking.
Demarais maintains it is likely Trump would take actions discouraging trans-Atlantic cooperation between the US and Europe aimed at containing China – which would surely please Beijing. Less directly, Trump: may assist China’s project to displace the global dominance of the US Dollar over time; and may boost China’s global access to vital new-energy minerals. Finally, she argues that increased US export controls directed against Beijing under Trump would harm America (once again) and foster green-tech retrenchment in the US. China, meanwhile, would continue as a world leader “in solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles” and all of this would help China to “influence global standards for future clean-tech goods culminating in an all-around win for Beijing.”
Speaking of revisionism, it is useful to remember that more revisionism can also be good for you. Thanks to Galileo advancing a Copernican-based revisionist view of our Solar System, the fundamental idea that the universe pivots around planet Earth was advantageously laid to rest.
Richard Cullen is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. He was previously a Professor in the Department of Business Law and Taxation at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.