‘Chexit’: China might just exit the multilateral order, if the US pushes it too hard

As Donald Trump runs for a second term in the White House, Beijing might retreat from its decades-long policy of opening up and playing by multilateral rules. If the Soviet Union could do it in the 1960s, why not China in the 2020s?

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Cédomir Nestorovic

Cédomir Nestorovic is professor of international marketing and geopolitics at ESSEC Business School.

Published: 1:00am, 12 Aug 2019Updated: 1:15am, 12 Aug 2019

The convergence of China with the West, initiated by Deng Xiaoping in the 1970s, has reached a fork in the road. Recent shifts in geopolitical policy and practice, chiefly by the United States, have presented China with the stark choice of continuing to play along with the Western order of things, as it has for the past four decades, or decoupling from cooperative endeavours and pursuing a wholly independent agenda.

The time has come for China to assess which option is most expedient for its advancement in the 21st century. The 45th US president looms large in China’s current calculus as to which approach will best serve its interests. The prospect of Donald Trump winning a second term – and the US’ trade war dragging on – will be an anathema to the Communist Party leadership.

The history of US politics tells us a Trump dynastic successor, in the form of Ivanka Trump or her husband, is not inconceivable. After all, we had the Kennedy and Bush dynasties, so why not a Trump dynasty? Equally possible is the ascent of a Trump lieutenant like Mike Pence or Mike Pompeo.

If this happens, China will have to brace itself for another decade of Trumpism and bumpy bilateral relations, in which every Chinese move is interpreted as a threat to US hegemony.