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SCMP

There is just one week to go before Americans decide whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will be the next US president.
On Thursday October 31, SCMP executive editor Chow Chung-yan, China editor Wendy Wu and North America Bureau chief Robert Delaney shared their insider knowledge in a subscribers-only event moderated by managing editor for content Yonden Lhatoo.
Below is an edited version of the main questions from subscribers and the panel’s responses. To watch the webinar in full, click on the recording below.
Subscribe now to watch this exclusive event.


What will a Trump victory mean for China?
Chow Chung-yan: At the risk of oversimplification, I will say that Trump represents greater uncertainty.
The Chinese officials by now are familiar with him and his style, but no matter how powerful the president is, the complicated China-US relationship requires a lot of work between officials at all levels. China actually put 28 Trump administration officials on the sanctions list. What if Trump puts someone who is on the sanctions list back into the government?
Over the past four years, China and the US have spent a lot of effort trying to build up communications. If Trump comes back, a lot of these working-level bureaucrats or officials will leave the White House, and then there will be a period of uncertainty.
China and the US also spent a lot of capital to bring back military-to-military communication. If Trump actually comes back, his relations with the military leaders in the US at present are not very good, and he is probably going to bring a wholesale change to that. Then the two sides will need to work from scratch to rebuild trust between them.
So all this is going to be very difficult for the Chinese.
People talk about Trump as someone who knows how to make a bargain, not someone who is going to have direct conflict with China. But I argue that the conflicts between China and the US are more structural rather than any individual’s personal preference.
And a Harris victory. What would that mean?
Chung-yan: Some people say that Harris will be more like continuity for China, because by and large, Harris is going to inherit Biden’s policy towards China. And then even though there will also be a round of changes, at least the framework will stay.
But Harris will also be bringing her own people and many people in charge of foreign affairs will probably leave. So that will bring a level of uncertainty as well, but it is just not going to be as great as with Mr Trump.
Which candidate does China prefer in the White House?
Chung-yan: I don’t really think China has a clear preference because each brings its own issues. And also the relationship between China and the US is really more structural [in terms of the conflicts]. The different candidate will mean that the rhetoric will be different, but the policy direction will remain probably more or less the same.
For example, for the past four years, despite all the lobbying attempts to negotiate, the Biden administration has kept most of Trump’s tariffs in place.
Another example is the so-called China Initiative under Trump. Under Biden, they removed it but actually they fully embraced something very similar.
People talk a lot about Donald Trump will be “America first”, will pay less attention to his allies, and maybe that will present an opportunity to Beijing. But I again will argue that if you compare now and back eight years ago, international politics is very different. I don’t really think [the general direction] will fundamentally shift.


Who is most likely to win and why?
Rob Delaney: Probably for the past two or three weeks, I would have said Trump. And it’s really just in the past 24 hours where I’m starting to reassess that.
If you had to make a call at this moment today, Wednesday, October 30, I will say it’s probably a little bit more in Harris’s favour at the moment.
I think the Trump campaign committed a major misstep in this rally that he had over the weekend where he invited a comedian on. He made these very disparaging remarks about just about everyone, in particular calling Puerto Rico as an island of trash or island of garbage. So that’s very significant because the reaction from the Hispanic community or the Latino vote, it could be moved by that.
There apparently is somewhere on the order of half a million Puerto Ricans that live in Pennsylvania – don’t quote me on that number. We know that Pennsylvania is a swing state. It’s very key in this election. In some small instances, developments like this can really have an outsized effect.
And then the fact that these polls are so close, it’s a very difficult question.
No matter who is in the White House, what can we expect regarding the Chinese economy?
Wendy Wu: China’s economy is facing a lot of headwinds domestically and also externally. So no matter who is going to be in the White House for the next four years, China is going to face some questions.
Is China going to fight a trade war on two fronts, both with the European Union and the United States? Is China going to face closer coordination on the tech and economic rivalry across the Atlantic? Will China face an escalation of the US tech containment strategy and will China be able to find and expand its external markets in the emerging economies in the Global South to counter the loss?
But those external issues cannot be clearly cut from the domestic issues.
And the fundamental issue and solution for this is for the Chinese leadership to restore economic resilience to regain the public’s and the foreign investors’ confidence in China.
The market’s expectation for further fiscal stimulus is quite high.
We really need to see something to take place on the ground to move the needle, to revitalise public confidence for career prospects, for income prospects and outlook.
They have to really increase the transparency and policy consistency in order to dispel lingering suspicions and concerns for investors.
If multinational companies continue to relocate their Asian headquarters outside mainland China to Singapore or other cities, China is still going to face a really daunting challenge about this confidence crisis.


What are the prospects for armed conflict in the region?
Chung-yan: While we cannot completely rule it out, I don’t think the likelihood is very high because a lot of this depends on how China will react.
Right now China’s priority is to restructure its economy. China’s priority is to move up the value chain to complete the science and technology transformation.
China realises that time is on China’s side. China is in no rush to start an armed conflict with anyone.
In terms of Taiwan, I think Beijing’s priority now is to put enough pressure on Taiwan to make sure that Taiwan will not opt for a radical move, but at the same time Beijing will use every opportunity to gradually squeeze Taiwan to force them back to the negotiation table.
I also don’t see how there is political will in the US to go into direct conflict with China.
Rob: I agree. A Trump administration that actively pushes for anything that would trigger an attack across the Taiwan Strait would be way out of line with what he has said before. The number one concern across the American electorate is economics.
If Harris wins, she would generally continue what Biden has done, and the Biden administration has been determined to keep high-level contact with Beijing.
On both sides you see signs that they do not want to get into a conflict. Of course, Congress is another animal.
What are we going to expect in terms of the US government ramping up its attacks on Hong Kong?
Chung-yan: I don’t think Hong Kong is an election issue. Even China is rarely mentioned. This election is very much domestically focused. But I do think that no matter who ends up in the White House, the Hong Kong issue will get worse.
There are many people in the US that would see a failure of Hong Kong as in the interests of the US because it will be taken as proof of a failure of Beijing’s policies. Then it can be used as a case example to argue why Taiwan should at least remain to be a separate part from China and why the Chinese mode of governance is problematic.
And the fact is that the US media’s reporting on Hong Kong is very one sided, very one dimensional. But unfortunately that is how the majority of people in the US look at Hong Kong through that [national security] lens.


What will be the impact on hi-tech industry if Harris or Trump wins?
Wendy Wu: There are increasing warnings from Chinese researchers and diplomats that the US is escalating tech containment from a “small yard, high fence” to a “thick yard with an iron curtain”. So no matter whether it’s Trump or it’s Harris, for the next four years, this tech war is going to escalate.
China is still gradually making advancements in trying to break through the tech containment. And those containment measures will not ultimately kill China’s technology advances. More than 10 years ago, China’s solar industry was almost killed by the US and EU. But the solar sectors in China revived again and became a global leader again. So I think that time and those technology components might delay China’s tech progress, but given the Chinese strong push on tech self-reliance, progress will still be foreseeable in the near future.
But China needs to be very careful about the closer alliances that the US is trying to forge with its EU partners and also in Asia.
If former president Trump imposes large tariffs on China what counter-tariffs would China impose on the US?
Chung-yan: No matter whether it’s Trump or Kamala Harris, I think it is inevitable that the US will put more tariffs on China. The reason is because it’s a structural issue. It’s not just a personal preference.
Also, tariffs are actually a means, not an end. The first time, Trump’s goal was actually to force China to buy more products from the US and to balance this so-called unfair trade where China had a huge trade surplus against the US. The result is that China did end up buying much more from the US, particularly agriculture and energy products. So it’s effective. That is why the Biden administration, despite all the lobbying and the pressure, they by and large kept the Trump tariffs in place.
Now, the Biden administration started what people called the tech war against China, trying to restrict the most sensitive and high end of technology from China – not just the important exports, but also the capital flow, the investment. The aim really is to keep the technology advantage over China. These policies are in fact quite effective. But gradually people in Washington have started to realise the limitations to this approach. The US may still have the lead over China in technology but China is making up for this disadvantage by really strengthening its manufacturing capability. Take the example of chips. Before 2007, China’s share of so-called legacy-chip manufacturing was only 17 per cent. Today it is over 30 per cent.
So China today actually accounts for 30 per cent of the global share in manufacturing. The rest of the G7 put together is actually still not at that level. In the US, particularly from the Trump side, a lot of the talk is about the hollowing out of manufacturing jobs in the US. And the US elite are very eager to bring manufacturing back to the US for various reasons. One way for them to do that is to use tariffs – to protect US manufacturing and to encourage Chinese and also other countries’ manufacturers to move their factory to the US to set up a manufacturing centre in the US.
If Trump or Kamala Harris imposed tariffs on China, China’s way of hitting back would be very different.
Who’s going to win this war? Where does it end? It really depends because the US is weaponising a lead in technology research but China is a weaponising a unique manufacturing capability.


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Opinion

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US Elections

From trade to tech to Taiwan, our China and US editors weigh in on the key issues


From trade to tech to Taiwan, our China and US editors weigh in on the key issues.
